In an era where geographic data underpins critical decision-making across various sectors, the need for open, interoperable data systems has never been greater. This presentation explores the transformative potential of open data through the lens of Overture Maps Foundation.

Overture Maps Foundation, established under The Linux Foundation in 2022, is developing enterprise grade, open map data as a shared resource. This fast-growing open data community enables companies, government agencies, and other entities to collaboratively build and maintain high-quality foundational map data in a more efficient and cost-effective way. With these base data available for use under open licensing, organizations can then focus on building their business-specific services and applications. Overture Maps' datasets act like a shared freeway, enabling innovation across sectors like local search, logistics, disaster recovery, environmental analysis, augmented reality, and automotive.

This initiative emphasizes interoperability, ensuring that data can be seamlessly integrated and utilized across different platforms and applications. Both interoperability and conflation are vital in collaborative environments where multiple organizations contribute data to ensure that data can be shared and accessed effectively as a unified resource. By leveraging open data and technologies, Overture Maps enables developers, researchers, and policymakers to build advanced geospatial solutions without the constraints of proprietary data silos.

Join this discussion to learn about:

• Overture and its genesis. Mapping the entire world — with every community, street, building, home and attractions (even as they change) — is challenging for any single organization to tackle, and the cost to build and sustain that data continues to grow as the demand for better data increases.

• Overture’s project scope. Overture is collaboratively building six global, open foundational data layers that can link to a near-infinite catalog of spatial data through a stable ID system.

• Overture’s Global Entity Reference System (GERS). Data conflation and enabling data interoperability are the biggest obstacles in realizing the full value of the abundant open map data resources available today. Conflation in particular is a challenge given spatial and attribute ambiguities and discrepancies across datasets. With GERS, datasets built by different organizations can reference the same real-world map features in a simple, unambiguous way.

This session will delve into the foundation's core principles, including the use of open-source tools, community-driven data contributions, and the implementation of best practices for data quality and governance. Attendees will gain insights into the technical architecture of Overture Maps, including its approach to data interoperability, and learn how to contribute to and benefit from this growing ecosystem. Come join us and learn about creating and using a single, coordinated, base map for the world!