Thank you for coming to my talk, I'm very glad that the room is so packed, so I hope
that this will be of interest to you.
So my talk is named OpenStreetMap, one geographic database to rule them all, mapping the railway
network for the public with the public.
And I will focus on OpenStreetMap and open data related topics for OSRD, which is an
open source project developed by SNSF, the French Railway Company, which is part of
the Open Rail Foundation.
So there are many information about this here on the panel.
Just a few reminders about why the railway company should invest in open data.
I think you are all convinced that open data is the way to go for all of projects.
But inside the railway companies, it's not always that obvious.
So we want long distance trains across Europe, so we can construct together the transport
network of the future on rails.
We want to do European cooperation because we have railway infrastructure managers in
all European countries that have the same needs, and yet we are still paying for different
software providers for the same tools and the same data.
And of course, we want free competition to prove that all of the train operators we work
with are treated the same.
So if we share the same source code and the same data, we can ensure that.
I will dive into the specific need of OSRD, which is our project.
Of course, you may have different data needs, so I will focus on these.
If any in the room have other experience with other types of data, I will be very happy
to discuss with you.
So in OSRD, we have four main features, pass-finding or route compatibility check is to find a
train pass in the European railway network.
And in time calculation is to calculate the time that the train will take to go from point
A to point B, conflict detection is to ensure that the train will not run into another train
during its route, and short-term train planning is to add a new train into the timetable at
the last minute.
Maybe you were lucky to hear my colleague Elwa this morning talk about this topic.
So to do these four features, we need a lot of data, tracks, geometry and topology at
track level and not line level signals, switches, routes and detectors, which are kind of technical
objects, electrification of the tracks, loading gauge, speed limits, slopes, curves, real-time
position of trains, and stations can be useful for display use.
So I've detailed the needs for each of the features, but what you can remind is that
we need a lot of data, which is all geographic and in high quality.
So the goal of this study and what I will show you today is we want to find and compare
European level open data to choose the best source for our needs at OSRD, but also maybe
for your needs if you're working with the same data needs in your projects.
I've compared four data sources, the RIMF or Registrar of Infrastructure is a data source
provided by the Agency for Railways of the European Union.
Inspire is a European directive that's ensure to share geographic data across Europe.
Then we can find open data platforms of infrastructure managers, but there are one data platform for
each company, so it can be quite confusing to find the good data and of course they all
use different formats.
And finally, OpenStreetMap, which is as you all know, I hope, collaborative database of
geographic feed data, and it feeds all of our needs.
We want open data, we want a data model which is consistent across Europe so that we don't
have to change the parameter of our tool in each country.
We want a data model that can evolve if we want to add a new feature.
Of course, we need English documentation, easy data access, and a wide data perimeter.
Let's try to access some data.
So here I am on the Inspire website, I can find a broken link in a mixed language.
Another example of Inspire data, which is supposed to have good metadata.
Here you can see the link to access the data, which is in the middle of the page, so very
easy to find.
And finally, another example, I could go on and on about this, but this is a page in,
I think, Swedish, but it cannot be translated nor copy and paste in any translator.
So you have to click and download the data, hoping for the best.
This is not to blame the people that have created these pages, but just to share that
finding open data can be very time consuming and very difficult, especially if you, as
me, don't talk all the European languages.
Then once you have downloaded the data, we can try to assess data quality.
For example, this is the railway network in Italy that I've downloaded from the Inspire
dataset.
And as you can see, there's supposedly a railway tunnel that links Tivita Vecchia and
Sardinia.
So I was very surprised by that.
I checked on the official RFI website, which is the Infrastructure Manager for Italy.
And in the official website, we cannot find this underwater tunnel.
So of course, I was not allowed to travel across all Europe to check all the data quality
that I've downloaded, so, yes?
In some place, it is true, but there it is not.
So first question we want to ask is for all the open data sources that I've found, are
they compatible with OpenStreetsMap?
In many cases, this is the case, but unfortunately, for the Creative Commons license, we must
ask the provider if the attribution in OpenStreetsMap is good enough.
So this can take more time, and it's not as easy as other type of licenses.
So if you publish open data, it's important to check if the license is compatible with
OSM.
And as you can see, unfortunately, there are still many European countries where I have
found no open data source at all.
So maybe it's because I don't speak the language, but still, it's problematic.
Then I've done a little quantitative comparison of the data I've found.
So this is a comparison of track length total for one country, so by country and by source.
As you can see, I have found data on OpenStreetsMap for all of the European countries, but not
an open data source that is not OSM for all countries.
And even more, what we can see on the graph is that in every country, the OpenStreetsMap
data shows more tracks than the open data data.
So even if there is open data available, it seems that the OpenStreetsMap data is more
complete.
Then I tried to design an indicator to see if all the useful data was available for OSRD
needs.
So you can see the same data needs that I've presented before.
And I have classified them by necessity.
So we require tracks and signals to make OSRD run, and then the other data are optional,
which means if we have them, this is good, and we will have a better result.
But if we don't have them, we can still run our tool and have partial results.
So I've designed an indicator, which is good if we have the two required data and two optional
data or more, then an OK indicator if we have part of the required data.
The required indicator can be one and a half if we have partial data.
It's quite complicated, but I have shared the full methodology on the blog, and I will
send you the link after, so don't worry.
What you have to remember is that this indicator will give you an overview of if the available
data can be used for OSRD needs.
So what are the results of this study?
First, what we can do is open data.
Unfortunately, as you can see, the map is not so green.
So there are a few countries where you can do OK or poor implementation of OSRD using
open data, excluding OpenStreetMap.
And then we can see the map for the OpenStreetMap data.
It's better.
It's not that better, but it's better.
So there are many countries that were read in the first map that are now green, and there
are many countries that were gray that are now red.
So it's not that good, but it's better.
What we can see is that OpenStreetMap is the database we should use and improve because
it's currently the best standard across Europe.
So as I've said, you can look at the full data and methodology on our blog.
So there is the detailed analysis for each country, as well as the sources for each
open data set that I found.
So if you're interested in one country, specifically, you can check out this.
I'd like to thank the people that have done the icons for this presentation, and also
a special thanks for the QGIS community that have allowed me to make the maps and most
of the analysis.
So maybe if there are QGIS developers there, thank you so much for your work.
And finally, if you want to contact us, there are emails.
You can learn more about the OSRD project on our website.
You can chat with us, and if you're a railway company, you might be interested in joining
the Open Rail Foundation, so let us know.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you.