NearMap PhotoMap imagery for OSM

[James Andrewartha-4]

Hi all,

NearMap is a company that's going to do monthly or more often flights over
the major cities, and license their images so that derivative works are
CC-BY-SA, ie for OSM. They're also using OSM for their map layer.
http://www.nearmap.com/ is their website but it's currently in stealth
mode - see [1] for the username/password.

The imagery is mostly around Perth so far, but Adelaide, Brisbane and
Sydney also have some coverage. http://twitter.com/nearmap is updated with
flights, apparently it takes two weeks for new imagery to go online. Their
presentation [2] from 2007 claims "We operate at much less than $5/km2"
thanks to their custom hardware and HPC processing. There's an investor
presentation [3] from their parent company (which is a networking patent
licensor) with a few more details.

The presentation contains so example shots, including over time and
comparisons to Google's imagery. There's more at [4] and in their forum
[5]. As well as photos, they have highly accurate terrain data.

James Andrewartha

[1] http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=900486&page=51
[2]
http://www.nearmap.com/assets/pdf/keynote/07-09-16NixonNearMapKeynote.pdf
(currently requires a username/password)
[3] http://www.ipernica.com/IRM/content/nearmap_news.html
[4] http://www.nearmap.com/community/topfinds.aspx
(currently requires a username/password)
[5] http://nearmap.lefora.com/forum/category/interesting-finds/page1/


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[John Smith-131]

2009/11/4 James Andrewartha <trs80@...>:
> Hi all,
>
> NearMap is a company that's going to do monthly or more often flights over
> the major cities, and license their images so that derivative works are
> CC-BY-SA, ie for OSM. They're also using OSM for their map layer.
> http://www.nearmap.com/ is their website but it's currently in stealth
> mode - see [1] for the username/password.

Do you know if they use multiple aircraft in the different cities, or
do they fly the same air craft around the country?

If it's the same aircraft do they plan to take imagery between cities too?

At $5/sq km, would it be possible to pay to get towns photographed
that might be out of the way?

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[James Andrewartha-4]

On Wed, 4 Nov 2009, John Smith wrote:

> 2009/11/4 James Andrewartha <trs80@...>:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > NearMap is a company that's going to do monthly or more often flights over
> > the major cities, and license their images so that derivative works are
> > CC-BY-SA, ie for OSM. They're also using OSM for their map layer.
> > http://www.nearmap.com/ is their website but it's currently in stealth
> > mode - see [1] for the username/password.
>
> Do you know if they use multiple aircraft in the different cities, or
> do they fly the same air craft around the country?

I think they use multiple aircraft - the cameras are housed in something
they call the HyperPod that looks like it just attaches to a regular light
airplane. They're not going to sell the HyperPod, just use it themselves.

> If it's the same aircraft do they plan to take imagery between cities too?
>
> At $5/sq km, would it be possible to pay to get towns photographed
> that might be out of the way?

I couldn't say, but they might do it once for free (vs the regular updates
planned for cities). For example, the WA coverage currently goes from
Lancelin to New Norcia down to Northam, across to Kelleberrin, down to
Quairading, back to Kalamunda, down to Dwellingup and across to Preston
Beach, but the outlying areas are flown much less often than the Perth
metro area.

The other cities are only just being flown (they're a Perth-based
company), so it's hard to say how much coverage they'll have in the long
term. For SA, the initial coverage around Adelaide is all the land west of
a line from just southeast of Gawler through Meadows to a point due east
of Sellicks Beach.

James Andrewartha


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[David Dean]

This looks awesome!

I've added a page to the wiki at to start collecting information about how we can use this imagery:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NearMap_Aerial_Imagery

Feel free to update it with any better details than what I've come up with so far.

- David

[John Smith-131]

2009/11/4 David Dean <ddean@...>:

>
> This looks awesome!
>
> I've added a page to the wiki at to start collecting information about how
> we can use this imagery:
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NearMap_Aerial_Imagery
>
> Feel free to update it with any better details than what I've come up with
> so far.

I haven't looked too hard yet, but at first glance it looks like you'd
just need a modified copy of the yahoo WMS page for JOSM and change
the URLs to the nearmap URLs.

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[John Smith-131]

2009/11/4 James Andrewartha <trs80@...>:
> I think they use multiple aircraft - the cameras are housed in something
> they call the HyperPod that looks like it just attaches to a regular light
> airplane. They're not going to sell the HyperPod, just use it themselves.

I wasn't looking to buy one, just see if we could get coverage of
larger regional areas like Tamworth in NSW which has 50-100k people,
but no sat or other hi-res imagery. While there are other regional
cities already mapped, land uses wouldn't have been so it would still
be useful to have coverage virtually everywhere Yahoo doesn't :)

> I couldn't say, but they might do it once for free (vs the regular updates
> planned for cities). For example, the WA coverage currently goes from

Do you work for this company, or have a contact with them?

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[James Andrewartha-4]

On Wed, 4 Nov 2009, John Smith wrote:

> 2009/11/4 James Andrewartha <trs80@...>:
> > I couldn't say, but they might do it once for free (vs the regular updates
> > planned for cities). For example, the WA coverage currently goes from
>
> Do you work for this company, or have a contact with them?

Nope, I just read their presentations and website thoroughly and inferred
their business model would support a single flyover as a hook to get
commercial and government licenses which would pay for regular updates.

Speaking of licenses, you should probably have a read of the commercial
ones - it's not clear to me if Big Tin Can Maps qualifies for the free
one, although IANAL.

James Andrewartha


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[John Smith-131]

2009/11/4 James Andrewartha <trs80@...>:
> Nope, I just read their presentations and website thoroughly and inferred
> their business model would support a single flyover as a hook to get
> commercial and government licenses which would pay for regular updates.

If they have imagery where no one else does this is bound to be useful
from a commercial perspective for someone I guess....

> Speaking of licenses, you should probably have a read of the commercial
> ones - it's not clear to me if Big Tin Can Maps qualifies for the free
> one, although IANAL.

I was more interested in it from the community aspect, but I do
forward anything that might be of interest to David who deals with the
sales side of things.

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[John Smith-131]

I posted a couple of wish list items to their forum.

http://nearmap.lefora.com/forum/category/wish-list/page1/

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[Michael-557]

John Smith wrote:
> I haven't looked too hard yet, but at first glance it looks like you'd
> just need a modified copy of the yahoo WMS page for JOSM and change
> the URLs to the nearmap URLs.

Since this is not a WMS server, it needs a bit more work. You should be
able to use these instructions:
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ph/2009-October/001537.html

Michael


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[John Smith-131]

2009/11/4 Michael <spam-me@...>:
> John Smith wrote:
>> I haven't looked too hard yet, but at first glance it looks like you'd
>> just need a modified copy of the yahoo WMS page for JOSM and change
>> the URLs to the nearmap URLs.
>
> Since this is not a WMS server, it needs a bit more work. You should be
> able to use these instructions:
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ph/2009-October/001537.html

I know it's not a WMS service, but that's what JOSM refers to it as,
their WMS plugin can load OSM tiles in the same way.

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[Peter Ross-5]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 2:12 PM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256@...> wrote:

> 2009/11/4 Michael <spam-me@...>:
>> John Smith wrote:
>>> I haven't looked too hard yet, but at first glance it looks like you'd
>>> just need a modified copy of the yahoo WMS page for JOSM and change
>>> the URLs to the nearmap URLs.
>>
>> Since this is not a WMS server, it needs a bit more work. You should be
>> able to use these instructions:
>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ph/2009-October/001537.html
>
> I know it's not a WMS service, but that's what JOSM refers to it as,
> their WMS plugin can load OSM tiles in the same way.
>

Do you know of any webpages which explain how to do this?

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[John Smith-131]

2009/11/5 Peter Ross <peter@...>:
> Do you know of any webpages which explain how to do this?

The problem is authentication, JOSM doesn't seem to be able to handle
http authentication, so it doesn't look like it will be useful to
anyone outside WA until they remove their current restrictions.

html:http://map-data.bigtincan.com/wms/nearmap.php?

***DO NOT*** try and open the above like in a browser, I did it twice
by accident and had to kill the browser process because all the http
auth requests.

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[John Smith-131]

Actually I added the username/password as part of the URL for the
images and it now works in JOSM :)

Add a new WMS layer etc, and put the URL as:

html:http://map-data.bigtincan.com/wms/nearmap.php?

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[John Smith-131]

Can anyone suggest attribution tags to use with NearMap.com's data?

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NearMap_Aerial_Imagery#Attribution

Their community license:

http://www.nearmap.com/legal/community-licence.aspx

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[Peter Ross-5]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 5:56 PM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256@...> wrote:
> Can anyone suggest attribution tags to use with NearMap.com's data?
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NearMap_Aerial_Imagery#Attribution
>
> Their community license:
>
> http://www.nearmap.com/legal/community-licence.aspx
>
We are using their photomaps to derive new information, so the
following statement from this page is what holds

If you derive information from observing our PhotoMaps, and include
that information in a work, you will own that work, and may distribute
it to others under a Creative Commons licence.

So we don't have to attribute anything, all we have to do is release
the data under a CC license, which it is.

And if you read futher down, the explicitly mention tracing for openstreetmap

For example, you may Use the Licensed PhotoMaps or Modified PhotoMaps
to obtain information which you can then use to populate or update
openstreetmaps.

So for me source=nearmap is all that is needed.

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[Michael-557]

John Smith wrote:
> I know it's not a WMS service, but that's what JOSM refers to it as,
> their WMS plugin can load OSM tiles in the same way.

Nice. JOSM keeps learning new tricks all the time :-)

In the meantime, I have also created a patch for the slippymap plugin to
include NearMap per default. It is attached. The resulting plugin can be
found @ http://rapidshare.com/files/302644272/slippymap.jar.html

What I like about slippymap is that is zooms in and out as you move
about the map, where the WMS layer stays fixed at one zoom level.

Michael

Index: src/org/openstreetmap/josm/plugins/slippymap/SlippyMapPreferences.java
===================================================================
--- src/org/openstreetmap/josm/plugins/slippymap/SlippyMapPreferences.java (Revision 18459)
+++ src/org/openstreetmap/josm/plugins/slippymap/SlippyMapPreferences.java (Arbeitskopie)
@@ -251,6 +251,37 @@
         }
     }
 
+    public static class NearMap extends OsmTileSource.AbstractOsmTileSource {
+        private static final String PATTERN = "http://web%s.nearmap.com/maps/hl=en&nml=Vert&";
+
+        private static final String[] SERVER = { "0", "1", "2", "3" };
+
+        private int SERVER_NUM = 0;
+
+        public NearMap() {
+            super("NearMap Australia", PATTERN);
+        }
+
+        @Override
+        public String getBaseUrl() {
+            String url = String.format(this.BASE_URL, new Object[] { SERVER[SERVER_NUM] });
+            SERVER_NUM = (SERVER_NUM + 1) % SERVER.length;
+            return url;
+        }
+
+        public int getMaxZoom() {
+            return 19;
+        }
+
+        public String getTilePath(int zoom, int tilex, int tiley) {
+            return "z=" + zoom + "&x=" + tilex + "&y=" + tiley;
+        }
+
+        public TileUpdate getTileUpdate() {
+            return TileUpdate.IfNoneMatch;
+        }
+    }
+
     public static class Custom extends OsmTileSource.AbstractOsmTileSource {
         public Custom(String name, String url) {
             super(name, url);
@@ -308,6 +339,7 @@
         sources.add(new Coastline());
         sources.add(new FreeMapySkPokus());
         sources.add(new FreeMapySk());
+        sources.add(new NearMap());
         sources.addAll(getCustomSources());
         // Probably need to either add these or let users add them somehow
         //      "http://hypercube.telascience.org/tiles/1.0.0/coastline", // coastline

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[John Smith-131]

2009/11/5 Michael <spam-me@...>:
> What I like about slippymap is that is zooms in and out as you move
> about the map, where the WMS layer stays fixed at one zoom level.

Fxied zoom can be useful as well.

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[Peter Ross-5]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 7:12 PM, Michael <spam-me@...> wrote:

> John Smith wrote:
>> I know it's not a WMS service, but that's what JOSM refers to it as,
>> their WMS plugin can load OSM tiles in the same way.
>
> Nice. JOSM keeps learning new tricks all the time :-)
>
> In the meantime, I have also created a patch for the slippymap plugin to
> include NearMap per default. It is attached. The resulting plugin can be
> found @ http://rapidshare.com/files/302644272/slippymap.jar.html
>
> What I like about slippymap is that is zooms in and out as you move
> about the map, where the WMS layer stays fixed at one zoom level.
>

I tried this plugin with the latest josm-tested.jar from the josm
website and got the following exception.

org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.PluginException: An error occurred in
plugin slippymap
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.PluginProxy.mapFrameInitialized(PluginProxy.java:33)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.PluginHandler.setMapFrame(PluginHandler.java:194)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.Main.setMapFrame(Main.java:162)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.Main.addLayer(Main.java:219)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.actions.downloadtasks.DownloadOsmTask$Task.finish(DownloadOsmTask.java:128)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.gui.PleaseWaitRunnable$1.run(PleaseWaitRunnable.java:69)
        at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:199)
        at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:597)
        at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:269)
        at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:184)
        at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:178)
        at java.awt.Dialog$1.run(Dialog.java:1045)
        at java.awt.Dialog$3.run(Dialog.java:1097)
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
        at java.awt.Dialog.show(Dialog.java:1095)
        at java.awt.Component.show(Component.java:1563)
        at java.awt.Component.setVisible(Component.java:1515)
        at java.awt.Window.setVisible(Window.java:841)
        at java.awt.Dialog.setVisible(Dialog.java:985)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.gui.progress.PleaseWaitProgressMonitor$4.run(PleaseWaitProgressMonitor.java:102)
        at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:209)
        at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:597)
        at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:269)
        at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:184)
        at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:174)
        at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:169)
        at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:161)
        at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:122)
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.PluginProxy.mapFrameInitialized(PluginProxy.java:30)
        ... 27 more
Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError:
org.openstreetmap.gui.jmapviewer.OsmTileSource$AbstractOsmTileSource.<init>(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)V
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.slippymap.SlippyMapPreferences$Coastline.<init>(SlippyMapPreferences.java:231)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.slippymap.SlippyMapPreferences.getAllMapSources(SlippyMapPreferences.java:339)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.slippymap.SlippyMapPreferences.getMapSource(SlippyMapPreferences.java:40)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.slippymap.SlippyMapLayer.newTileStorage(SlippyMapLayer.java:115)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.slippymap.SlippyMapLayer.<init>(SlippyMapLayer.java:141)
        at org.openstreetmap.josm.plugins.slippymap.SlippyMapPlugin.mapFrameInitialized(SlippyMapPlugin.java:24)
        ... 32 more

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[David Dean]

This pseudo-wms (or whatever we are calling it) doesn't appear to zoom in as far as the NearMap data allows. For example, this link:

http://map-data.bigtincan.com/wms/nearmap.php?bbox=153.0113011,-27.4445217,153.0115373,-27.4443121&srs=EPSG:4326&width=500&height=500

returns the right region, but is not 500*500 pixels in width. It seems that the zoom level is not getting any closer than z18, while I think NearMap can support a fair way past that.

- David

Bugzilla from [e-mail] wrote:

Actually I added the username/password as part of the URL for the
images and it now works in JOSM :)

Add a new WMS layer etc, and put the URL as:

html:http://map-data.bigtincan.com/wms/nearmap.php?

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