[okfn-labs] OpenPlaceDatabase.org

Wed Dec 18 15:56:53 UTC 2013

OpenPlaceDatabase.org <http://www.openplacedatabase.org/> was recently
started with the goal of solving a specific problem:

* Enable geocoding to shapes (boundaries) as opposed to just a point
* Track boundary changes over time so that the geocoding can be done in a
historical context

You can read more about
this<http://blog.genealogysystems.com/2013/12/watercooler-wednesday-14-retrieving.html>on
our blog.

The Open Place Database is open
source<https://github.com/openplacedatabase/www> and
the data will be open too once we're done acquiring seed data and ironing
out our schema and data flow.

The app and API run on node.js. The data is currently stored in the file
system and we use ElasticSearch to index it for searching. Eventually we
expect to enable reverse geocoding at which point we'll need to add a
spatial index.

Two things we're currently working on:

DATA

Historical data will be a challenge. There are very few data sets for
historical administrative boundaries, and those that do exist are either
poor quality or have restrictive licenses.

We found an open data set of historical country
boundaries<http://library.thinkquest.org/C006628/download.html>but it
appears to have been created by students tracing maps at a low
resolution, plus we can't tell what GCS and projection they used so we're
having trouble plotting it correctly on Google Maps.

We're resigned to the fact that we'll have to eventually start overlaying
digital scans of historical maps and trace them. Thankfully, many pieces of
that problem have already been solved by NYPL
Labs<http://www.nypl.org/collections/labs> (Map
Warper and Building Inspector). If we can nail the experience then we
should be able to get considerable help from crowdsourcing.

EDITING

We're working on an interactive editor for our data that's similar to
OpenStreetMaps
iD editor<http://openstreetmap.us/iD/release/#background=Bing&map=20.00/-77.02271/38.90085>.
But we're running into problems with shapes that have lots of points. The
browser can run out of memory very quickly.

Thoughts? Suggestions? We like praise too.
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