CubeWerx and The Carbon Project Contribute Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for Haiti

(Updated Jan 25) Today volunteers from CubeWerx and The Carbon Project announced that free mapping data from OpenStreetMap (OSM), the United Nations and other sources have been organized into an open information network for the nation of Haiti. The Haiti Spatial Data Infrastructure (Haiti SDI) is a public resource that may be updated by anyone and used in Google Earth, OpenStreetMap editors, the free Gaia SDI Platform and other applications to support relief and rebuilding.

Gaia users may click here to preview Haiti SDI data services now. This application will stream live data and maps to your desktop - some geographic features will display faster than others depending on internet connection speed. Service URLs are provided below for users on all applications to access Haiti SDI services and Google Earth KMLs will be posted shortly.

The Haiti SDI is based on international standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC): the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) and OGC Web Feature Services (WFS) Interface Standards. The Haiti SDI provides four capabilities:

Haiti SDI Cascading WMS – A unique service that provides a single access point for applications like Google Earth, Gaia SDI Platform and OSM editors that implement WMS. The service works by aggregating WMS deployed in the last few days into one easy-to-use resource - including New York Public Library, University of Cincinnati, CubeWerx framework WMS, GeoEye and DigitalGlobe imagery, government data and more.

Haiti SDI OSM WFS – A data service that refreshes from OpenStreetMap (Geofabrik) sources every hour and deploys the data as OGC WFS so any application may instantly connect to the most up-to-date information from the OSM community.
Haiti SDI UN WFS – A data service that provides United Nations framework data through an open interface that implements the WFS standard. United Nations framework data includes Boundaries, Hydrography, Transportation, Locations, and Population information.
Haiti SDI VGI WFS – A Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) service that enables anyone to add GML points, lines or polygon WMS annotations, contributing their own Haiti framework data and information about tent cities, emergency operations, locations, and points of interest data. This service employs OGC standards based tools such as the Gaia WFS-T Extender.

“We hope the Haiti SDI will help the people of Haiti and everyone working to assist them," said Jeff Harrison, coordinator for the Haiti SDI project. “We are planning coordination sessions in the coming days and working to make sure this resource is openly available to as many people as possible.”

All OpenStreetMap, United Nations and Volunteered Geographic Information for Haiti SDI are freely available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. Haiti SDI services are being posted on http://www.crisiscommons.org/ as often as possible.

The Haiti SDI services are evolving rapidly and updates are being posted here and www.Twitter.com/JeffHarrison. Please contact info@thecarbonproject.com if there are specific information needs.

NOTICE - Haiti SDI Cascading WMS, OSM WFS, UN WFS, VGI WFS were given dedicated servers at 1PM ET Jan 22. Old URLs for all Haiti SDI WMS & WFS will be maintained until 6PM ET Jan 25. Please update your applications as needed and use the new URLs.