A recent blog post on the foundation’s website marks the first year of the Overture Maps Foundation. Founded by AWS, Meta, Microsoft and TomTom, the intent was to create reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable open map data as a shared asset that any map service provider or developer can use to power richer mapping services. In its first year, the foundation, who gave a talk at Geo Week 2024, accomplished several goals, including the launch of five data themes of core map elements with a consistent data schema, as well as building release processes and mechanisms to maintain a monthly release cadence.
The foundation also managed to grow to over twenty member organizations. Recent additions were AddressCloud, Nearmap, Conterra, AddressForAll, and Development Seed. AddressCloud is a UK-registered company offering a location intelligence platform serving the global insurance market. Nearmap was founded in Australia and provides high-resolution aerial imagery, city-scale 3D datasets, and integrated geospatial tools. Conterra is an intelligent GIS solution provider based in Germany, while AddressForAll is a non-profit organization that maintains an open, collaborative and free address database. Development Seed is a Washington, DC-based software company that specializes in building tools that derive useful insights from complex data.
Plans for 2024
The foundation also announced its plans for 2024, after laying the basis for their open map data. As mentioned in an earlier article on Overture on this website, addressing data is an important location data theme that is meant to be part of the foundation’s open map data. The addition of both AddressCcoud and AddressForAll are logical from this perspective. Additionally, the foundation hopes to finish the Foundation-building phase early 2024, and focus on having an impact on the market through growth in several areas, including growth in adoption, data, feedback, and base layers.
Risk assessment services
Addresscloud published a short blog post on joining the foundation, stating that it will be expanding its risk assessment services on top of Overture’s building data layer and sharing its experiences and insights with the entire ecosystem. More specifically, Overture is providing Addresscloud with 1.4bn global building outlines, which enables the intelligence platform to provide insurers with a rapid assessment of geographic peril risk worldwide, tailored to the size of the building. In return, members of the Addresscloud team will work with the Foundation to share knowledge and best practice on data mapping as Contributor Member.
Overture and TomTom’s Orbis Maps
One of Overture’s founding members, TomTom, published an extensive blog post explaining the need for interoperable map data through collaboration and standardization, as provided by Overture. TomTom CEO Harold Goddijn states that “the demand for map content, accuracy and freshness is such that no company alone can meet the future requirements of this industry”, which requires standardized, interoperable map data. He continues by stating that large tech companies are adopting Overture’s new open map standard, and that adoption is spreading to carmakers, application developers and other big tech companies. The standard is also the basis for TomTom’s Orbis Maps that combines mountains of data from a vast amount of open and proprietary sources, resulting in highly accurate and detailed maps.
