NEW YORK, April 27, 2015”OpenStreetMap will hold its annual State of the Map conference in New York City June 6-8, 2015, at the United Nations. The State of the Map brings together volunteer mappers from the United States and abroad with representatives of governments and NGOs, business and education to share their expertise to make free crowdsourced geodata available worldwide to all who need it.
In a statement the United Nations said, … the benefits that OpenStreetMap offers are issues that are close to the heart of the United Nations: to empower nations and individual citizens, to facilitate economic progress and to create a level playing field where all have access to accurate and up-to-date information. OpenStreetMap is already being used by the UN in disaster management and emergency response and there are many more fields where it could provide great value.
In the conference more than 50 presenters from over 20 different countries will give updates from community mapping projects around the world, describeOpenStreetMap’s work with governments and NGOs, talk about new uses ofOpenStreetMap in education and commerce and showcase new technology that will foster better and more-efficient mapping.
“State of the Map is a place for the community to meet and develop the future of OpenStreetMap, as well as for other organizations to learn about how they can use OpenStreetMap to educate students, to grow their business or to make their community better,” says Alyssa Wright, president of the U.S. Chapter of OpenStreetMap.
The main conference will take place June 6 and 7, followed by a hack day onJune 8 that will include workshops and a marathon mapping session, called a mapathon, which is being organized by Missing Maps, a new initiative of OpenStreetMap, the American Red Cross, the British Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders to map vulnerable communities.
About OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of maps, allowing anybody to map their environment: streets, towns, restaurants, schools, etc. The map data created through the project is completely open, fueling a large and growing contributor community.
Since its beginnings in 2004 the OpenStreetMap project has grown to 2 million users and close to 30,000 mappers updating the map each month. Today, OpenStreetMap powers mapping applications in businesses, governments, and nonprofits around the globe.
