When you have a closer look into local maps database, you’ll find out there is a lack of maps provided by european agencies. Canada, Australia and the U.S.A. released high quality maps into public domain and NASA and USGS deliver a valuable service making them accessible via Internet. Both public data and service leads to better education, deeper research and more commercial niches.
2005 Odysseus’ homeland Ithaca was found with the help of World Wind - a 3D enviroment displaying high detailed maps from Earth - by three british researchers. They used the free Geocover 2000 dataset and the digital elevation model to identify the right place mentioned in Homer’s ‘Odysseus’.
The open structure in the United States made an encouraging collaboration possible: within a few days after Katrina’s landfall 2005 near New Orleans 5000 highres photos have been taken, digitized, georeferenced and published online in different formats by Open Software developers, researchers, national agencies and government.
Quick help was possible, decision makers from government agencies checked availability of infrastructure like bridges and streets in advance and disaster response was scaled right and efficient to affected people.
In Europe situation is different, actually if you want to see Europe on your personal computer you want to use maps available from NASA. The European Space Agency has satellites in orbit, for example ENVISAT with several instruments delivers important spatial information on environmental conditions.
However aquired data is not public except some examples. Though Earth has been captured several times with different instruments you cannot expect a service like NASA’s Landsat. Instead you have to apply for a Cat1 or Cat2 registration to get access or choose a professional service like Euroimage.
As blogged here the EU is in process to regulate Geodata within its boundaries. Important decisions will be made soon. It is time to get active and show interests on both public geodata and a public process on this topic.
- Read the Press Release Council Letter
- Sign the Petition for public geo data.
- Request these working documents for public view.
- Lobby your Minister.
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