Towards an open data model for the wine industry
Last week, I had the pleasure of talking about mapping with a totally different group of people: the Australian wine industry.
At Platfarm’s first Collabriculture workshop, “Open Mapping and the Wine Industry”, I shared about linear referencing and building data standards for curb regulations, and how this work could be applied to vineyard management.
What do vineyards have in common with city streets? A lot more than you might expect. The image below shows the elements of a vineyard. …
Invitation for feedback
Hello, curb enthusiasts! Over the past few months, SharedStreets received some requests and feedback from folks creating or using CurbLR feeds. We’ve drafted a handful of proposed changes to address that feedback, which would move us over a a new version of the spec (v 1.1.0). If you’re a CurbLR user or interested party, we invite you to give comments over the next couple of weeks by reaching out by email or Github.
The main thing the changes address is the concept of priority levels. We heard feedback from a few folks about how the current priority levels approach was…
By Ross Bernet and Simon Kassel on July 7th, 2020
This post was originally published on azavea.com. We’ve cross-posted it here on the SharedStreets blog to highlight the great work done by Azavea and Philadelphia’s Center City District.
Curb management is becoming a hot topic for cities as street users compete for the often overlooked resource. Many books ( like this and that) have been written about parking. Companies are forming to enable improved access to parking and parking data. Cities are publishing reports about their curb management strategies ( San Francisco’s). Data standards are being created to improve digital coordination.
Why curbs need an open digital ecosystem & how we get there — Emily Eros, Kevin Webb & Mollie Pelon McArdle
After years of all eyes being on the curb in cities, we have arrived at an important moment. Contention for this street space has always existed, and conflicts have risen as more vehicles, like scooters, bikes, and delivery trucks, demand access to the side of the street. But the curbside holds great promise for the future of cities: the ability to reimagine and reprioritize precious street space away from single occupancy vehicles and towards walking, biking, transit and shared mobility modes.
Before cities can reimagine the future, they need better data to understand and communicate current regulations.
Digital regulations should…
Since diving into work on the curb, SharedStreets has developed a data standard, wrangled cities’ existing datasets into CurbLR format, and outlined approaches and tools for leading a curb inventory.
Next on our list: completing our own curb inventory from scratch.
On a cold afternoon in November, we headed out to map curbs in downtown Portland. We used open source tools for mapping so that we could demonstrate what’s possible with existing, free technology¹.
Over the course of a few hours, SharedStreets staff surveyed three miles of curb regulations, equating to about 1,300 parking spaces. We processed the field data…
SharedStreets lets maps talk to one another by relying on a fundamentally different way of conceptualizing the street.
Typically, transport-related data is defined by spatial coordinates (like latitude and longitude) that describe the location of features. We also use attributes (like street names) that describe their properties. But transport systems are only quasi-geographic; the location of a street matters, but so does its role within the whole network of streets and intersections. That’s why it’s so hard to work with disparate datasets. For example, a city’s GIS file and a company’s speed dataset may have a different understanding of exactly…
Most cities today collect and manage extensive datasets for their street networks using geographic information systems (GIS). Likewise, more and more private companies are generating street data as they oversee rideshare operations and micromobility fleets. Despite the abundance of data, considerable barriers limit what’s possible for internal data management and external collaboration.
The Problem: maps can’t talk to each other
A common problem is that different maps can’t talk to one another. A city may have a GIS dataset for its street centerlines, but it’s difficult to connect this to data for other features on the street, like sidewalks, curbs, parking regulations, and bus stops. …
Increased interest in the “humble curb” has prompted more and more cities to consider inventorying their curbspace. But how can they go about doing this? What methods and tools are available? And what exactly needs to be collected?
No matter how a city tackles a curb inventory, imagery and geolocations need to be collected from the field — with dashcams or LIDAR, or by staff on the street. These raw inputs must be processed (by humans or computers) into structured curb regulations with street-referenced geometries. Cities can use existing, free tools (like FieldPapers + a camera + JOSM), to do…
We’re pleased to announce the release of CurbLR version 1.0.
CurbLR is an open, linear-referenced data standard for curb regulations, developed by SharedStreets in partnership with Ford Mobility’s UK-based team. It provides a way for cities to collect and share curb information in a consistent format, which can then be consumed by tools, apps, and platforms.
Earlier this summer, we announced our foray into curbspace and presented a draft spec as a starting place for discussions with city staff, corporate entities, and interested individuals. Based on this feedback, we made several changes to the spec. We’ve just released CurbLR 1.0…
A proposed approach
Curb (or “kerb”) management has become a hot issue in cities as street users compete over limited space along the street to park cars, hail a ride, deliver packages, and drop off scooters. City governments and private companies have been scrambling to map curbspace and its uses, with private platforms springing up to help capture this data. At SharedStreets, we’ve been working with a number of cities and companies like Ford to help develop an open standard for curb regulation data, which creates a common language for data creation, sharing, and consumption.
Emily Eros
Product Lead @ The Open Transport Partnership & SharedStreets
