[OSGeo-Discuss] Remote routing solutions

Dan Putler dan.putler at sauder.ubc.ca
Tue Oct 6 15:55:05 PDT 2009


There are actually several different specialized routing engines that
work with OpenStreetMap data. The summary page on this on the
OpenStreetMap Wiki is (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Routing).

And yes, data is a _huge_ issue. For many folks OpenStreetMap is likely
to be the only choice. It needs improvement for its use in a number of
applications, but it is fast becoming one of the largest (if not the
largest) databases of public geodata available. One problem is that in
some sense it may now be too large. From a routing point of view it
needs to have its road segments ("ways") broken at intersections, and
include address range information (the de facto method of doing this is
the Karlsruhe Schema,
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relation:associatedStreet, although
the percentage of street ways that have this information tagged to them
is small). Adding this information would generate a lot more data in
what is already a huge database. Given this, I think there is a need for
some organized thought as to what could be done to create a routing
database based at least partially on OpenStreetMap data, that along the
way improves the main OpenStreetMap database. For example, in many parts
of the US OpenStreetMap data consists almost entirely of uploaded (2006
vintage) TIGER/Line data (with the address range data stripped off),
while in many of these areas county level center line road data is
publicly available (Allegheny County, PA is one such location). Given
the size database issues, and the culture of the OpenStreetMap
community, it seems unlikely that a raw planet dump would ever make an
ideal public routing database, but it could be the keystone in providing
one.

Dan

On Tue, 2009-10-06 at 23:36 +0200, Markus Neteler wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Stephen Woodbridge
> <woodbri at swoodbridge.com> wrote:
> > Mateusz Loskot wrote:
> ...
> > The big issues in most cases will be data. Some people are doing routing
> > with OpenStreetMap
> 
> ... for example:
> OpenStreetMap routing service
> http://yournavigation.org/
> 
> Markus
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
-- 
Dan Putler
Sauder School of Business
University of British Columbia




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