Getting around town and finding what you need is about to get easier thanks to volunteers like North Chattanooga resident Randy Hale. The North River Geographic Systems owner does GIS mapping for a living and spends a good portion of his spare time adding data to OpenStreetMap.org, an open platform for sharing and editing map data worldwide that he describes as “Wikipedia for maps.”
North River Geographic Systems owner and North Chattanooga resident Randy Hale works on local maps.“Google Maps isn’t terribly up-to-date,” said Hale as to why a platform such as OSM is necessary.
Another reason is that earlier this year Google started charging for commercial use of Google Maps, he said. OSM was created to be free for anyone to use and it will stay that way, because unlike Google Maps, no one owns the rights to OSM, said Hale.
He is responsible for most of the data in the North Chattanooga area available on OSM, the platform used by companies such as Foursquare, Apple and Wikipedia to deliver maps to their users.
Hale said anyone can set up a free OSM account and add to or edit the maps, which is done using aerial photography or just by simply walking around. He set up a notification to inform him when anyone adds to the maps in the North Chattanooga area, and he checks for mistakes and makes corrections when necessary.