OpenStreetMap OSM has gained a certain critical mass over the last few months. In many parts of the world, it is the best base map available. That's particularly true during disaster response: you just need to look at the OSM map of Haiti to understand this.
At present, OSM is becoming associated with 'open source' since many of the tools used to maintain OSM are open source tools.
Yet ArcGIS professionals have much to offer OSM. They have the knowledge to refine content, to transfer appropriate content from the Geodatabase into OSM. They have the world's best editing environment. I'd like to see the ability to apply these editing tools to OSM.
So a desktop user should have the ability to view a service of OSM as a layer in ArcGIS desktop. They should be able to select features from their Geodatabase and then copy them into OSM. These features should then be able to be snapped into existing OSM content. Where an ArcGIS professional wanted to refine someone else's contribution, they would be able to select the OSM feature and then interact with the OSM vertices.
Some might see OSM as a 'threat' to the Geodatabase or to ArcGIS Online content. Sure, there are overlaps but mostly I just see synergy. If ESRI technology can be used by ESRI users to contribute to (and then benefit from) OSM then everyone gains: OSM gets better faster (with all the huge benefits during disaster response); ESRI users get to benefit from the unreservedly free OSM; and the overall ArcGIS experience gets even richer.
I think there are other connect points between ArcGIS and OSM but for now, the Desktop editor would be a great start!
GIS professionals and GIS professional amateurs (mappers?) could come together on OpenStreetMap, so I concur with David’s point. I would like to be able to take out certain 'layers' from OSM and correct them where necessary and useful. I can only see benefits here, especially in areas where there is hardly any vector data available.
I did see a few positive mentioning’s about OpenStreetMap in Bernie's talk at the DevSummit (was that here?) and Jack's talk at Where 2.0 (Moving People with Pixels). Watch and listen to Tim Berners-Lee on “The year open data went worldwide” and mentioning OpenstreetMap and Haiti. Ends with “we have only just started”.
The ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap is a free, open source add-on for ArcGIS for Desktop that helps you become an active member of the growing OpenStreetMap (OSM) community. OpenStreetMap is an open and freely available database of geographic data. The editor makes it easy for you to download OSM data, make changes to the dataset, and contribute those changes back to the entire OSM community.
The OSM Editor provides
Simple tools to upload and download OSM data
An OSM-compatible geodatabase schema to locally store OSM data
An OSM symbology template for faster editing
Conflict-resolution tools for reconciling data back to the OSM database
The ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap, its documentation, and its source code are available on CodePlex, Microsoft's open source repository, and released under the Microsoft Public License.
I have used the ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap add-in for ArcMap to download into FGDB format. Use ArcMap to create a network dataset for routing if needed. Feel free to create packages for offline use. ArcGIS Pro can be used to open the FGDB and MXD files for use in the modern GIS app.
I would very much like to see the tool, especially the load network from OSM part, brought forward to ArcPro. Literally the only reason I kept ArcCatalog (Desktop) for the past few years was to make the network, and then bring it into ArcPro for analysis.
Although it's not a direct method, using https://overpass-turbo.eu/ to export OSM data in GeoJSON format and then using the ArcGIS Pro JSON To Features tool works well.
This is a key requirement for our workflows. I would second WalkerKB comment, this is now the only reason I need to keep going back to ArcCatalog. For me, the ability to load large (country sized) OSM files into a FGDB is the most important feature.
