I have just put together in JOSM a map of all of the world’s ground-level flight information regions, using the map data available at https://observablehq.com/@openaviation/flight-information-regions as a baseline, and then confirming as much of that data as I could using the available aeronautical information publications of each country. I would have liked to add this data to OpenStreetMap, but two concerns are stopping me from doing so. One, the data from observablehq.com is licenced under CC BY 4.0, which requires a DRM waiver, and two, it would seem that flight information region data is just not suitable for OpenStreetMap, as outlined here https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Aviation. So what should I do? Should I just keep it to myself as a sort of personal art project, or is there any other project similar to OpenStreetMap out there that might find it useful?
Off the top of my head, Wikimedia Commons would welcome this dataset in GeoJSON format. They have a dedicated space for map data that can automatically integrate with interactive maps on Wikipedia. It’s basically a depository for static datasets, as opposed to datasets that many people need to collaborate on continuously.
Thank you for that idea. I am now converting this data to GeoJSON, one FIR at a time.
Did you already upload it? I’m interested in that data set.
Working on it. But this is turning out to be slow going, since many of these FIR boundaries incorporate actual international boundaries, and that data inflates the size of the dataset by quite a lot.
Okay, the data set is completed, and with all the international boundary data added, the resulting GeoJSON takes up over 100 MB. But now there is a concern that Wikimedia Commons will not accept this data due to copyright issues.
Oh, I thought the dataset on Observable is CC BY licensed. Is there concern about the data being contaminated by unfree data or something?
I had to confirm the boundary data by looking in the aeronautical information publications of the individual countries. That is where the copyright issues originate. I am now seeking input from the Wikimedia Commons community on this.
Any update on this?
It is not suitable for Wikimedia Commons. The full data set is over 100 MB, and some FIR boundaries are more than 2 MB in size, meaning Commons cannot cope with it. Plus, there are inescapable copyright concerns.
If you wish, I can send you a compressed version of this data set for your own personal use.
That would be awesome. Is there any place and hope where we can try to improve the dataset so it might be true open data one day?
Assuming the primary use case for this data is display, you might be able to simplify each boundary down to a more reasonable size without losing too much precision using QGIS or Mapshaper.
Would it be possible to derive new geometries based on unencumbered administrative boundary data and raw facts about FIRs from these sources? I’m quite unfamiliar with aeronautics, so I don’t know what the sources usually look like – were they charts or something in a different form?
In addition to that, I suspect that quite a lot will be actually “public domain” by virtue of being available from US federally financed maps (and where boundaries have not changed since 1945, via out of copyright maps produced by the US).**
** source - I inherited a pile of these maps, handed over from the US to UK educational institutions in the 1960s (when they’d finished funding Animal Farm).
But this particular dataset is worldwide, so hundreds of other jurisdictions have a stake in this as well.