OpenStreetMap
Queensland Mappers Rejoice! - Cadastre geometry now available
Posted by morb_au on 2 October 2009 in English.As mentioned in recent talk-au mailing list posts, the mashup australia competition is now open and as a side effect we now have some lovely datasets available for the first time under CC-BY licencing.
I've converted and added the cadastre shapefile dataset to a WMS server. (Due to disk space constraints I've chosen to keep the geometry only, which is all you need if you want to trace medial lines for the basic route of highways, railways and waterways).
I've added the WMS connection and source details to this page:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Australian_Data_Imports
Strictly speaking it's not a data import - I'm only using it to trace off. However if the OSM leadership would like to import 2.1 million property boundaries into the OSM database then please let me know.
For the impatient you can set a new WMS server entry in JOSM to the following address:
http://206.123.75.6/cgi/ms/mapserv?service=WMS&version=1.1.1&request=GetMap&layers=dcdb_lite_geometry&srs=EPSG:4326&format=image/png&map=../../mapserv/wms.osm.au.qld.map& (the last & is important!)
It will work up to about a 1:10000 scale, but at that point most street casements are only a handful of pixels wide.
Apparently my mapserver manual tells me it might also work as a WFS server as well, but I haven't had a chance to source a WFS client to verify.
I've been using it tonight to add in generic streets around Calliope (just inland from Gladstone), as per the location attached to this diary entry. It seems to have grown quite a bit since the effective-date of the ABS suburb import, especially towards the NE.
Other areas to benefit so far have been Springfield and North Lakes in the Brisbane metropolitan area.
Discussion
Comment from JohnSmith on 2 October 2009 at 15:32
Seems to be a similar database that google got their hands on, same errors :)
I would discuss things before manually drawing too many areas out, I think it would be very beneficial to have this data in OSM, just a matter of deciding how to move forward with the import.
Comment from morb_au on 2 October 2009 at 16:30
Which errors?
Comment from balrog-kun on 3 October 2009 at 15:30
I, too, think this data should be imported if possible -- there will be a percentage of people opposing to loading such amounts of not-so-crucial geo data on the mailing lists when it's put up for discussion but in the end the storage should not prevent us from making detailed maps. If the property boundaries are not imported from an official source, eventually local mappers will recreate the same dataset, just with poorer quality.