Open Street Map showing Transmission Line

Question

I just observed recently that Open Street Map is showing Transmission line, Transmission line structures, and Substation locations. As well as Voltage for those lines.

Is that legal from a Homeland Security point of view?

We only just noticed it because we never use that as a base map but I turned it on the other day.

There is an indication that one of our lines was added 12 years ago.  Now we never give out our data without a date share agreement. NERC.  And 12 years ago there were very few we had shared it with in a digital format.

MarcoBoeringa · Answer

Robert,

As someone who is active in the OpenStreetMap community, but not working for ESRI, I do have a couple of remarks regarding your concerns. Note that I speak fully on personal terms here as a community member! I am also not a legal representative of the OpenStreetMap community:

* ESRI only copies / displays the existing data, OpenStreetMap data content is not curated or owned by ESRI (or for that matter anyone). It is a community project residing under the OSMF (OpenStreetMap Foundation). So for any questions regarding OpenStreetMap content, you likely should not be contacting ESRI, but use one of the communication channels of OpenStreetMap (forums, mailing lists etc., e.g. OpenStreetMap Help Forum , OpenStreetMap: Geo News you can use! ,  GIS - OpenStreetMap).
* If you have concrete evidence that transmission lines, substations or other infrastructure in your region was directly copied / imported from data that does not conform to the Open Database License (ODbL) of OpenStreetMap, then you should contact the Data Working Group of the OSMF (OpenStreetMap Foundation). They take care of illegal imports not conforming to the ODbL. That said, although I do not know the details, "There is an indication that one of our lines was added 12 years ago." seems a claim that needs much better substantiation. There is a lot of highly detailed data in OpenStreetMap, often carefully crafted from detailed aerial imagery, that may seem similar to other datasets, but has been independently digitized by community members. In addition, legal imports do take place after consent of data owners and if the data's license is ODbL compatible. See the OpenStreetMap Import Guidelines for the recommended practice.
* On the one hand, I understand your concern regarding Homeland Security, but on the other hand, it is not that you can hide powerline infrastructure. Even if it does not appear on the map, high voltage lines and substations are visible from miles away due to their size, and can easily be found on the ground or identified from aerial imagery as available almost everywhere. So, as a personal opinion, I don't think removing power infrastructure from OpenStreetMap, would add any security to these vital infrastructure elements. In addition, there are many countries around the world, e.g. here in the Netherlands where I live, where powerlines and substations are a formal part of official government produced topographic maps, and have no special status.
* OpenStreetMap is a community project, it can only thrive in an atmosphere where people accept that there may be local country specific differences in content added to the map (actually, the underlying database), but that any rendering in a map has to be a neutral, not country specific, representation, and may include something like powerline infrastructure. While there are a few known exceptions, like Google showing different content and specifically country borders to users in some countries, it is virtually impossible to create a styling that takes care of all sensitivities in each country. It is already hugely complex to render a map as detailed as OpenStreetMap is, let alone take care of >200 country specific styling wishes.
* The only realistic way that the visual map on www.openstreetmap.org therefor can differ in content, is if the local - country specific - community has broad consensus to not map specific content. I actually personally only know of one such case: In Israel, there seems to be broad consensus among the local community, to not map any military infrastructure (which is being mapped in other countries), and remove anything added by community members not aware of this local consensus.
* In your case, if you feel action is needed, you would need to convince the local US chapter of the OpenStreetMap community, to have consensus about not mapping powerline infrastructure in the US in OpenStreetMap. That will be a tough call I think, but is the only realistic way.

RobertBorchert · Answer

I don't see anything there that would lead me to think that.

They appear to be referencing gazetteer types of data in the link you shared.

However, using that as a lead I went to HIFLD page and found their data offerings in an excel spreadsheet.

They do indeed list Transmission lines in that sheet. So I used the url to the data and opened it and wen to the line I was looking at. When clicking the line it says the Source is Open Street Map.  However, unlike OSM it also shows the names of the subs to and from as well as the owner of the line

JohnAlsup · Answer

Hi Robert.

You may want to check out this site.  https://maps.nccs.nasa.gov/arcgis/home/item.html?id=2e0471ae7a114277a8a1b16568c6cd20

It appears the data you are referring to is actually published by Home Land Security as part of HIFLD.