Modeling railways in OSM: from 2D to 1D

Berend Schotanus, First Flamingo Enterprise B.V.

Details about the talk:
OpenStreetMap is potentially a great datasource for all kind of applications in railway business. The level of detail is incredible. But turning lots of data into useful information on a higher abstraction level can be quite a challenge. In order to get meaning out of the basic data you are likely to search for a translation between raw data and a domain specific language.
Many railway business logic is based upon a simple '1D' coordinate system: the mileage or kilometrage along the railway line. This is very effective, for instance for timetable calculations. So as a first step to aggregate meaning from raw map data I searched for a translation between these two coordinate systems.

Details about the speaker:
1990 Graduated as a Civil Engineer
1991 - 2003 Innovation specialist for Dutch National Railways
2004 Started my own company, exploring progress in information technology

Theme: map