OpenStreetMap
Import permission granted for Santa Cruz County, AZ
Posted by bumpyroad on 17 February 2023 in English.I received the following reply from Bill Beaver, Senior GIS Analyst for Santa Cruz County, Arizona in regards to copyright and importing data. All county GIS data (hosted at https://sccaz-gis.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html) except parcel data is in the public domain and not copyrighted.
I have created the user SantaCruzCountyAZImport for this import.
From: Bill J. Beaver <bbeaver@santacruzcountyaz.gov>
Date: Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 9:02 AM
Subject: RE: OpenStreetMap and SCC GIS Copyright
To: Galen Asphaug <...>
Hi Galen,
Anything on that site is open data except parcels. To download the data in various formats try our public data share at: https://v953w.app.goo.gl/CtgX
Bill
Bill Beaver | Senior GIS Analyst
Santa Cruz County IT Department
275 Rio Rico Dr. #1
Rio Rico AZ 85648
(520) 375-7786
-----Original Message-----
From: Galen Asphaug <...>
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2023 11:51 PM
To: Bill J. Beaver <bbeaver@santacruzcountyaz.gov>
Subject: OpenStreetMap and SCC GIS Copyright
Hello, I hope this message finds you well.
Thank you for making Santa Cruz County GIS data available to the public. My name is Galen Asphaug. I am a contributor to the OpenStreetMap project, a collaborative open project to create a global geodata set freely usable by anyone.
We respect the intellectual property rights of others, and I write to ask if we may use your data. We are interested in reproducing some of the data hosted at https://sccaz-gis.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html
(specifically: building footprints, addresses, road names and paths, and 'Patagonia Addresses with Businesses' data). This is a fantastic dataset and we appreciate the field work.
Can you please clarify what license (if any) this data is being shared with?
Thank you again for helping to ensure that this data is being used as widely as possible, and to support the general public and local commerce.
Galen Asphaug.
Discussion
Comment from watmildon on 17 February 2023 at 20:51
Nice! Presumably they have road centerline, address, and building footprint data? Anything else?
Comment from bumpyroad on 17 February 2023 at 21:37
watmildon: Yep! Roads with names, building outlines with addresses, and also POI such as post office, local business, restaurants. (names only, no openings hours, etc). Also included is official county/city/town boundaries.
There is also some data that is irrelevant to OSM, such as boundaries for fire department service areas, public schools, voting, etc. I will not import these.
I am new to imports so I will take this one slow, starting with the Town of Patagonia. I am unfamiliar with how to process the data in bulk in order to import without adding data on top of data. I’m comfortable editing scripts to work with the data. I am currently studying the Imports wiki page. I will make a wiki page for this import and link it here soon.
If you or anyone here has advice, it would be much appreciated! (programs to use, scripts to process data, etc)
Comment from watmildon on 18 February 2023 at 00:41
Definitely add the source to the list here so it’s tracked and other users can reference: osm.wiki/Potential_datasources/Local_data#U.S.
I highly recommend finding imports of the type you’re trying to work on and reading their entries in the wiki. Scan through the Import Catalog. Always good to not reinvent things if you don’t have to. You can also find specific users to reach out to! For example, you’ll find my Indianapolis Address Import.
For address info specifically, you’ll probably want to use the already prepared National Address Database info from ESRI as it’s already been cleaned up and OSMified. I’m running a huge project for the greater Phoenix area to do just that. The instructions link off into other reading about address data additions you may find interesting.
I’m not super familiar with transforming building data but definitely wouldn’t mind working on it with you if that helps get things rolling. You can ping me here or the OSM US Slack or the OSM Discord with the same username.
Comment from bumpyroad on 18 February 2023 at 19:52
Thank you, I appreciate the info. I added a paragraph to the potential datasources page, and I will try and learn from other previous imports nearby before doing any serious work.
I want to avoid importing the addresses as points because the data provided by the county has address info tagged to most buildings already. I could compare to the National Address DB just to make sure everything looks correct.
Do you (or anyone) know if the email above is acceptable for proving that the data can be imported? It is not licensed or copyrighted in any way, just a disclaimer. I might want to send another message and ask for explicit permission to use this with OSM. It looks like other imports in AZ have been successful in getting permission from local governments. However, if there is nothing wrong with skipping this step (since it is already “open data”), that would make the process a little easier. Perhaps there is an admin that is familiar with the legal side of OSM that I can reach out to about this.
If needed, I was thinking of using a letter similar to the 3rd template here: osm.wiki/Import/Getting_permission
Thank you for your help. I will reach out (probably on discord) when I start modifying the data.
Comment from watmildon on 21 February 2023 at 03:44
I’m still somewhat new to navigating the legal portion of these things and don’t have a great sense yet of whether the mail above is a strong enough statement. The folks on the import mailing group (US or otherwise) would have a better idea. The issues is that there’s lots of different flavors of “open” in data and they can conflict in various non-obvious ways. For example, a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license is an “open” license that conflicts with our OLDb license because we say you CAN use it for commercial use (with attribution).