[R-sig-Geo] Geocode for Bogota

[Tomislav Hengl]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Putler [mailto:dan.putler at sauder.ubc.ca]
> Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 6:46 PM
> To: hadley wickham
> Cc: Tomislav Hengl; r-sig-geo at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R-sig-Geo] Geocode for Bogota
> 
> I'm afraid Hadley is correct. Section 10.12 of Google Maps/Google Earth
> APIs Terms of Service states:
> 
> 10.12 use or display the Content without a corresponding Google map,
> unless you are explicitly permitted to do so in the Maps APIs
> Documentation, the Street View API Documentation, or through written
> permission from Google (for example, you must not use geocodes obtained
> through the Service except in conjunction with a Google map, but the
> Street View API Documentation explicitly permits you to display Street
> View imagery without a corresponding Google map);

Thank you for pointing us to the Terms of service (which is obviously very important). I still think that the situation with Google Maps API is not as bad (the speed and quality at which Google is building a digital data is impressive). In my case (http://spatial-analyst.net/wiki/index.php?title=Mapping_research_hot-spots) I use Google Maps API only to grab the coordinates of points and run analysis. I attach my own variables to the points and distribute only the end result of analysis (e.g. http://spatial-analyst.net/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Fig_geostatworld.jpg). Would this then also be against their terms of service? I do not think so - I use the work somebody did to geocode things, but distribute only end results of my analysis (my own content). I guess it is a sort of trick to go around this problem (e.g. to still use their service and not break any Terms of service).

But you are absolutely right: we should focus our efforts on building/promoting open access data portals such as Open Street Map.

T. Hengl
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/t.hengl/ 

> 
> The full terms of service are available from
> http://code.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html
> 
> Yahoo! Maps API Terms of Use:
> http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/maps/mapsapi/mapsapi-2141.html
> has similar language in sections 1(f)(vii) and 1(f)(viii).
> 
> I think very highly of Open Street Map, but the ability to actually use
> OSM data to accurately geocode locations is only going to be possible in
> a very limited number of areas (Karlsruhe, Germany perhaps?) since OSM
> mappers have appropriately tagged an extremely tiny fraction of the map.
> 
> The legal answer to Juan Tomás Sayago original post is to either obtain
> a public road network file with address range information (which may be
> available from a local or national government agency, very possible in
> Canada, the US, and recently the UK, but I have no idea about Bogota or
> Columbia) and use this data in conjunction with the PAGC geocoder
> engine: http://www.pagcgeo.org to create a shapefile set that can then
> be read into R. Alternatively, he could purchase a commercial
> application and a commercial road network layer, or pay a supplier to
> geocode his address list.
> 
> Dan
> 
> On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 07:57 -0800, hadley wickham wrote:
> > > They limit, however, the number of geocode requests to 15,000 in a 24 hour
> period. If the url connection breaks, then it might be a good idea to run the
> same loop one more time and set add a while command to look for the missing
> coordinates.
> >
> > It's also against the terms of service to use it in this way (to save
> > on your local computer and as input to further analyses).
> >
> > Hadley
> >
> --
> Dan Putler
> Sauder School of Business
> University of British Columbia