[HN Gopher] Open Infrastructure Map
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Open Infrastructure Map
Author : bearbin
Score : 129 points
Date : 2022-01-15 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (openinframap.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (openinframap.org)
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Nice! I can finally locate LA's Scattergood-Olympic underground
| transmission line that was repaired in 1989 to much engineering
| prowess [1].
|
| https://openinframap.org/#10.58/33.9452/-118.3529
|
| I love infrastructure engineering. There's so much going on that
| allows us to take things for granted. Even the 2021 Texas power
| grid failure fared relatively well for how close it skirted
| absolute disaster.
|
| [1] https://practical.engineering/blog/2021/9/16/repairing-
| under... (I should give Grady more money) People here may
| remember jwz's post on the topic in 2002, copying the emails from
| 1989 (note the following link may display something unsavory with
| the HN referrer, in which case copy-and-paste it):
| https://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/
| szundi wrote:
| Aren't these national security secrets?
| [deleted]
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I used to work in those circles ~15 years ago and the short
| answer was: Yes.
|
| It turns out that an absurd amount of sensitive/national
| security information is actually public _but_ it becomes
| sensitive once it 's organized in a way that it becomes
| "actionable" for attack, compromise, etc. In my particular
| situation, an acquaintance studying operations+logistics had
| overlaid communications trunks with transportation hubs and
| realized many of them were one in the same.
|
| Now that more of this information is available easily and in
| readily combinable forms should make us re-evaluate all of it
| and how much gets shared, with who, when, and to what detail.
|
| _Btw, this is also a reason you should be skeptical whenever
| there 's a leak and someone claims "none of this data is
| classified!" While technically true, a piece of non-classified
| but relatively unknown information might be the missing piece
| that makes something actionable._
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| It is pointless to 'hide' the things which are accessible to
| anyone, including people who isn't even there physically, eg
| can look through Google Earth or just browse photos with geo-
| tags.
|
| Back in the day it could be (and sometimes was) a secret or
| protected information.
| r0gue808 wrote:
| Not necessarily, there's a huge drive at the moment (in the UK
| at least) encouraging utility companies to make their asset
| related data open and publicly available. Look up the Energy
| Networks Association's Open Networks initiative, quite
| interesting. The same approach is being taken by other European
| countries.
| tomrod wrote:
| It was a major blocker when I was writing my dissertation. It
| would have been WONDERFUL to have this.
| bertil wrote:
| I noticed that the nearest power plant nearby isn't here. It's
| really small, so I'm not surprised but I'm not sure how to flag
| the discrepancy and share details about the station.
| etcet wrote:
| Check out the about page: https://openinframap.org/about
|
| You probably just need to tag the building "power: plant" on
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Like the growth of bacteria on a petri dish
| hamolton wrote:
| Looks like OSM doesn't have a ton of data on US pipelines or
| water lines. It's understandable. I do wonder if tools like this
| would encourage more mapping of these.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| certainly US legal questions apply, but what about other
| criteria? avoiding simplistic responses.. nations have
| responded differently to mapping and open maps. A recent UNGGIM
| report showed that close to fifteen ( _edit not thirty_ )
| percent of nations politically recognized worldwide, do not
| publish national maps themselves in any meaningful way. Next
| consider the case of the UK Commonwealth Nations, who generally
| considered maps and mapping to be Crown authorized only, until
| a certain date not long ago. Opposite to that is the nation of
| China, which I think forbids all mapping of anything at all, to
| be done or publicly published, without a license from the
| single political party government. Other interesting cases
| abound, in fact, most nations have unique stories and
| solutions.
|
| I suggest we avoid simplistic responses or carefully worded
| trap questions from a Defense point of view only, and really
| engage in a civil manner, about a topic that does have Defense
| elements, but also real civilian elements, too.
| yummypaint wrote:
| Alot of that info is probably already publicly available as GIS
| datasets. Many counties and cities have surprisingly good web
| interfaces to such information or at least will let you
| download it. Most people probably use it to look up land parcel
| information, but they usually include many more layers such
| hydrants, water and sewer, sometimes detailed local electrical
| grid info depending how local utilities operate.
|
| Someone should make a crawler that specifically looks for GIS
| data on government pages and auto-adds it if passes sanity
| checks and is up-to-date.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Definitely see some transmission lines missing (e.g. the line
| going through the Fish Lake Valley in Nevada), but I guess it's a
| WIP. I'll probably figure out how to contribute...
| zaik wrote:
| It's built on OpenStreetMap data, so you can start contributing
| by clicking the 'Edit' button on openstreetmap.org
|
| Here's the OSM wiki entry on how to map power lines:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Power_lines
| jcims wrote:
| Would be difficult but interesting if they included proposed
| projects. There are 36 square km of solar farms planned in west
| central ohio that don't show here at all.
| zaik wrote:
| The data seems to be from OpenStreetMap. Features which do not
| currently exist are out of scope for OSM.
| tomrod wrote:
| It shouldn't be too hard to generate new geospatial layers if
| the data is available.
|
| It's not on OSM to do so, of course, but it isn't infeasible.
| karussell wrote:
| Impressive data collection from OpenStreetMap (as always :)).
|
| It would be great when wind power sources could be highlighted
| like solar sources and when wind & solar are more visible by
| default. Even solar power parks appear only on larger zoom scale
| (in my area).
| blhack wrote:
| This is _incredibly_ detailed. Really neat.
| fjfaase wrote:
| In August and September 2007, I spend some tracking all major
| power lines in the Netherlands using Google Earth. Interesting to
| see that the information provided on openinframap.org is much
| more detailed.
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(page generated 2022-01-15 23:00 UTC)