PROJECT OPENSTREETMAP AS OPEN AND FREE SOURCE OF GEODATA AND MAPS

The article characterizes the fundamentals of the project OpenStreetMap (OSM), which is an original source of open and free geodata. It describes the current state of the project, its usability for geoinformatics technology (GIT) and anticipates its near future. It is compared to similar free and open source projects. As an example, there is given a focus on the representation of the Czech Republic and the local OSM community. In the first part, there is a description of the project core and associated external community web services. Very interesting is its starting point, the users ' motivation and their mapping capabilities like quality, quantity and actuality. OSM is using a specific XML data format and an easy 2D model of geodata. The data are published under a free license. Only a few rules for editing are required, but many recommendations are given. Specific renderers are used for generating thematic maps. Geodata and maps are importable to traditional GIT and a extension for editing the specific OSM format is developed. The next part is focused on the Czech Republic. There is a list of externally imported data, basic data sources and completeness layers. Demos of several thematic maps like highway/street map, cycle map, public transport map and other are shown. It discusses problems concerning the geometric part of geodata- its topology, descriptive part of geodata and semantics. Further are discussed categorizing objects, area completeness and thematic catch of mapping. The last part is about the project's future. The near future of the project consists in changing the license. The long-term future will be based more on users ’ than developers ’ ideas