This panel, moderated by Eddie Pickle, brings together leaders in the open data community—Maggie Collie (OpenStreetMap US), John Crowley (MAPAP Action), Angelina Calddron (Meta / Overture Maps Foundation), and Jed Sunwal (Radiant Earth)—to discuss the role of open data in fostering resilience. They highlight the importance of initiatives like OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Overture Maps in building communities, developing tools, and providing crucial data for emergency response and other applications. The discussion emphasizes that resilience relies not only on the availability of open data but critically on the human curators and institutions that maintain and update it, especially in rapidly changing environments. Panelists share success stories of collaborating with federal agencies, such as using OSM to fill gaps in federal transportation and trails data. They explore the challenges of sustaining open data efforts and engaging government effectively, touching on issues like licensing, bureaucracy, and ensuring feedback loops from data users back to data creators. The conversation stresses the necessity of durable institutions, aligning incentives across diverse stakeholders, and fostering collaboration and community engagement as foundational elements for building a truly resilient geospatial data ecosystem.
• Panel discusses the role of open data in promoting resilience.
• Features leaders from OpenStreetMap US, MAPAP Action, Meta / Overture Maps Foundation, and Radiant Earth.
• Highlights key efforts like OpenStreetMap (OSM), Overture Maps, and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).
• Emphasizes that resilience depends not just on open data availability but critically on the human curators and institutions that maintain and update the data.
• Discusses the importance of building durable institutions and aligning incentives across diverse stakeholders (users, creators, companies, government) to sustain open data efforts.
• OpenStreetMap US focuses on supporting the community, tools, and education to lower barriers to contributing and using data.
• MAPAP Action uses open data extensively for international disaster response, stressing the need for updated data in dynamic situations.
• Meta / Overture Maps contributes and uses open data, aiming for data quality, usability, and scale, particularly with the Global Entity Reference System (GURS).
• Radiant Earth works to make free data "cheaper" by improving web-accessibility and ergonomics of large datasets using cloud-native formats.
• Shares success stories of federal agency collaboration, such as using OSM to fill data gaps in transportation (BTS) and trails (NPS).
• Touches on challenges in government engagement with open source/data due to issues like licensing (ODbL), bureaucracy, trust, and funding models.
• Advocates for feedback loops from data users back to data creators/maintainers to improve data quality over time.
• Highlights the fragmented nature of the US domestic disaster response architecture (federal/state/local GIS capacity) and the need for rethinking.
• Emphasizes the need for collaboration and community engagement across government, industry, academia, and non-profits as fundamental for building a resilient ecosystem.
• Suggests focusing on community-led standards/specifications and aligning around common formats and identifiers (like GeoParquet, STAC, GURS).
• Concludes by stressing the importance of partnerships, staying connected, and community as crucial for the future of open data for resilience.
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