Project Document
Sharing authoritative and reliable geospatial information has been an important issue for decades or nearly a century inside and outside the United Nations. United Nations Geospatial has been collaborating with country-led projects like International Map of the World (IMW) project and Global Mapping (GM) project in spite of technological challenges regarding possible political concerns involved.
Vector Tile (VT) technology is a key technology for Smart Maps that enables full data ownership and control by data providers with reasonable cost-sharing arrangements, which is a technological solution reducing possible political concerns. United Nations Vector Tile Toolkit (UNVT) was established in 2018 as a successor of the GM project with an unchanging ideal of sharing authoritative and reliable geospatial information for Sustainable Development, and with a new important objective to meet the requirements of UN operations.
DWG7 is a UN Open GIS Initiative Domain Working Group built on top of the UNVT project and is going beyond. Participated by partners from not only Member State governments and International Organizations but also the private sector and academia, Domain Working Group (DWG) 7 is building an open global practice community of engineers and operators who are keeping web maps open and diverse. DWG7 is contributing to informed decision making by providing fast and smart maps based on modern web technologies.
This part is an excerpt from the UN Open GIS Initiative document.
The UN Open GIS Initiative is to identify and develop an Open Source GIS bundle that meets the requirement of UN operations, taking full advantage of the expertise of mission partners (Member States, technology contributing countries, international organizations, academia, NGO's, and the private sector).
The strategic approach shall be developed with best and shared principles, standards, and ownership, in a prioritized manner that addresses capability gaps and needs without duplicating the efforts of other Member States or entities. The UN Open GIS Initiative strategy shall collaboratively and cooperatively develop, validate, assess, migrate, and implement sound technical capabilities with all the appropriate documentation and training that in the end provides a united effort to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of utilizing Open Source GIS around the world.
This part is an excerpt from the UN Open GIS Initiative ToR (updated 29 June 2018).
- Contributor
- any Member State or organization who agrees with the strategy manifesto of the UN Open GIS Initiative and actively contributes to the UN Open GIS Initiative in terms of financial, materials, solutions, technologies, and/or human resources. The contributor membership shall be decided by the Strategic Board.
- Observer
- any Member State or organization who agrees with the strategy manifesto of the UN Open GIS Initiative and participates in the UN Open GIS Initiative actively. The observer membership shall be granted by the Strategic Board.
DWG7 Structure
Build a global community of engineers and operators who are keeping web maps open and diverse.
- Hidenori Fujimura @hfu (Geospatial Information Authority of Japan - GSI)
- Diego Gonzalez Ferreiro @diegonfer (United Nations Global Service Centre - UNGSC)
DWG7 shall be reporting to the Co-Chairs and the Strategic Board of the UN Open GIS Initiative. In practice, DWG7 is reporting to the UN Open GIS Initiative through monthly meetings.
We consider DWG7 as an open global practice community and take a federated approach; participants bring their high-level objectives with clearly defined owners and success criteria to get all the DWG members on the same page. Participants will get opportunities to share their progress within DWG and also to the UN Open GIS Initiative through its monthly meetings.
- We treat people as equals. Everyone is welcome.
- We prefer open collaboration.
- Contributions are esteemed by their merit.
- We respect data producers.
- We criticize ideas, not people.
- We believe in fail forward to learn and improve.
- We move by empathy and trust, not by requests.
- It is OK to use a local language. It is nice to use a common language.
We support participants:
- to design, produce, style, host, and optimize vector tiles.
- to cope with resource-limited environments.
- to learn about use cases.
- to have fun.
- to introduce new ideas.
- to help each other.
- to handle images, raster data (terrain tiles), point clouds, and 3D city models, too.
Operationalize vector tiles in the UN
We introduce an effective and efficient geospatial data dissemination mechanism for the UN field missions and the UN Secretariat. It will be cost-saving for the Organization.
- Vector tile production from both UN and OpenStreetMap data (concordant with the UniteMap.)
- Hosting vector tiles for open-source map libraries (such as MapLibre GL JS) and ArcGIS Geoportal.
- Develop elevation RGB raster tile (Terrain Tiles) from existing DEM and contour lines for 3D terrain maps.
- Continuous improvement of the data structure and map style for better operations.
Regular update of the vector tiles
daily for mission areas, twice a week for other areas
keep regular updates
Objective 2: GSI operation
Operationalize GSI vector tiles in distributed hosting environments
We scale out map applications by promoting vector tile hosting by different parties including private enterprises.
- Officially release GSI topographic vector tiles
- Promote tools to replicate and host GSI topographic vector tiles
- Promote distributed use of GSI topographic vector tiles
- Promote value-added applications of GSI topographic vector tiles
Number of tiles monthly sent from GSI server [tiles/month]
6 billion tiles/month
0% increase from 6 billion tiles/month in 2023-10
Number of operators hosting GSI topographic vector tiles
+3 in 2023-10
Objective 3: UNVT Portable
Introduce UNVT Portable in local governments
We equip local governments with modern and portable web map services. We promote informed decision making by local governments, residents, and volunteers especially in disaster response.
- Support local governments introducing UNVT Portable.
- Promote UNVT Portable by joining hackathons in the context of public use of ICT.
- Number of local governments we approached
- Number of hackathons we participated
- Aoyama Gakuin University
- CrisisMappers Japan/DRONEBIRD/JapanFlyingLabs, NPO
- Tokyo Cartographic
- Geospatial Information Authority of Japan
Demonstrate a distributed map hosting environment for equitable Smart Campus solutions
We support educational campuses and potentially other premises through equitable smart solutions. We provide a schematic and efficient geospatial data solution (Campus Layers) to various educational campuses and integrate it with dashboard feature, routing feature, and 3D capabilities.
- [Nascent Infotechnologies Pvt. Ltd.]] - Santosh
- Aoyama Gakuin University - Taichi
- Geospatial Information Authority of Japan - Hidenori
Objective 5: 3D Spatial ID
Develop and facilitate 3D geospatial data free flow by extending vector tiles for 3D applications
We provide a 3D spatial object model for 3D Spatial IDs. It will be available at https://github.com/spatial-id with related libraries and applications. Typical use cases include UAV flight planning and underground utility management.
- Provide 3D spatial object model implementation at https://github.com/spatial-id.
- Promote applications of 3D Spatial IDs.
- Ideate the use of 3D Spatial IDs in the context of the UN Open GIS Initiative.
- Explore different 3D Spatial ID 'content-type' such as 3D Tiles and COPC.
Number of software implementations at https://github.com/spatial-id
3 in 2023-10
Number of 3D Spatial ID applications we coordinated
5 in 2023-10
Integrate sensor data
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
Support all other objectives through understanding and utilizing the OSS and Open Data that is essential to Smart Maps.
We understand and contribute to a number of OSS and Open Data that are essential to Smart Maps. We will research and prepare OSS and Open Data for other objectives to take advantage of. These OSS and Open Data may be held by several disparate organizations or individuals, but we understand and coordinate their interests. Depending on the situation, we may develop new OSS ourselves.
- Understand and document how important each OSS and Open Data is to Smart Maps, including how to utilize it
- Package OSS and Open Data for ready-to-use
- Contribute to relevant OSS and Open Data
- Number of OSS and Open Data we utilized
- Number of OSS and Open Data we contributed
- Taro Matsuzawa (@smellman)
- Yui Matsumura (@yuiseki)
- Taro Ubukawa (@ubukawa)
- Hidenori Fujimura (@hfu)