State Of The Map 2010

The Instituto Geográfico Nacional is also a sponsor of the State of the Map 2010.

The IGN is the main Spanish national mapping agency, within the Ministry of Public Works, responsible for the official topographic maps, orthophotography, historical cartography, and the often overlooked tasks of geodesy and seismography.

More important, though, is the fact that the IGN is in charge of the INSPIRE initiative in Spain. Leading by example, the IGN has been one of the first European agencies to publish geodata through the use of Spatial Data Infrastructures and OGC-compliant services like WMS and WFS. The Spanish Spatial Data Infrastructure web portal is a fine example of how to publish sets of geodata in such a way that professional GIS software can use it seamlessly, and nowadays holds hundreds of servers and thousands of data layers. The IGN also encourages and facilitates other Spanish sub-national mapping agencies to publish their geodata within a spatial data infrastructure framework.

Having the IGN as a State of the Map sponsor is a wonderful opportunity for mapping agencies to learn how to publish geodata; for OpenStreetMappers, to know the requirements and wishes of mapping agencies; for companies, to see the breadth of datasets and geospatial services (both OpenStreetMap- and mapping agency-based) they can build their applications upon.

OpenStreetMap and Mapping Agencies may come from different worlds, but share one important goal: we both wish to make the most out of geodata. By coming to the State of the Map, you will learn just that.