Overture Maps Foundation is an organization for creating geospatial data sets, maintained by some of the biggest names in the business, such as Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and ESRI. Overture recently released their first batch of open geodata. It contains:

• Places of interest
• Buildings
• Transportation
• Administrative boundaries

The products are based on several data sets, such as OpenStreetMap, and my take is that the Overture products will be used extensively in numerous commercial applications, such as web maps, search engines, AI and vehicle routing.

What does all this mean for you?

• You now have access to additional global data sets that will be maintained and updated. Use it for analysis, as a backdrop for your mapping projects or research.
• If you run a business, such as a store, restaurant, café, B&B etc, and you would like it to be included in the search results in the solutions based on these products, now is the time to make sure that your business is properly represented and available as geodata. For example, if not already done, add your juice bar/beach café/book store to OpenStreetMap. That way, it will likely be available in the next map update from Overture. Also make sure that the tags (URL, phone number, opening hours, accessibility info etc) are updated. No one like to drink old milk geodata. Have a look at the post on how to get started adding data to OpenStreetMap.

But what about data quality in these data sets? In my experience, the data quality in OpenStreetMap can be a bit shaky at times, especially when it comes to information that can change rapidly, such as store locations. Has this been improved in these new data sets? I will get back with some test results in a separate post.