2026/09/02 –, Phoenix Hall
Every month Overture Maps Foundation releases more than four billion records of global multi-source map data as GeoParquet files, available in public AWS and Azure buckets. We also release a modular schema as Pydantic packages, a data changelog in Parquet, metadata in STAC, PMTiles, and other open tools to make all of it usable. The spine of Overture's work is the Global Entity Reference System (GERS), an open ID system for maps, and we're building it with 50 member companies. Most map ID systems belong to a single company. An open one is unusual, and building it with companies that compete with each other is harder still. In five minutes I'll cover what a GERS ID is, where it comes from, what the GERS registry captures, and how bridge files help you join your own data to GERS.
Overture Maps Foundation
Level of technical complexity: 1 - beginner Give indication of resources (video, web pages, papers, etc.) to read in advance, that will help get up to speed on advanced topics.: Indicate what is (are) the open source project(s) essential in your talk:GeoParquet, PMTiles, STAC, Pydantic
I make my conference contribution available under the CC BY 4.0 license. The conference contribution comprises the abstract, the text contribution for the conference proceedings, the presentation materials as well as the video recording and live transmission of the presentation:
I'm a geographer and staff product manager at Overture Maps Foundation, where I work on the schema, GERS, developer tooling, user research, and documentation. I've spent about fifteen years in geospatial, working across product, engineering, and developer advocacy teams.