Open Infrastructure Map

Open Infrastructure Map(openinframap.org)

298 points by bearbin 4 years ago | 45 comments

AceJohnny2 4 years ago |

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/

pottertheotter 4 years ago | |

A new line was put in in 2018 for $130mm. "The new transmission line is an addition to the original line which began commercial service in 1974 and had been experiencing reliability issues. The original line will be used a backup, should it be needed."

https://www.ladwpnews.com/ladwp-completes-construction-of-th...

hamolton 4 years ago |

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.

yummypaint 4 years ago | |

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.

fineIllregister 4 years ago | | |

Let me be the one to say: Open Street Map has had some difficult experiences with automated edits, and has developed a process to prevent such problems.

Creating such a bot might get edits reverted, unless done consistent with their policies: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Automated_edits

mistrial9 4 years ago | |

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.

rswail 4 years ago | | |

Maps in Commonwealth countries made by their geophysical departments tend to have Crown copyright rather than Crown authorization. Unlike US government products which are by definition and law, not considered subject to copyright (ie are in the public domain).

dhx 4 years ago | | |

The RAND report "Mapping the Risks" (2004) [1] finds that only 6% of sampled US federal GIS datasets were useful to an adversary wanting to attack US infrastructure. The datasets sampled were quite varied and included the obvious power, natural gas, etc infrastructure but also included less obvious datasets such as the location of hazardous chemicals. The report found that none of the GIS information provided to the public they sampled would be useful for adversaries, primarily because the information was readily available via other means that an adversary would prefer to use instead (e.g. [2] for how this was done in the cold war prior to satellite imagery becoming commonplace). The report also characterises the main barrier to a terrorist attack on infrastructure not being a lack of knowing where to attack, but rather, having the means to perform an attack that would have any significant effect. Knocking out a few power pylons here or there would be more of an inconvenience that could be quickly recovered from. By comparison, destroying the only factory in the world with machinery capable of producing a critical consumable component needed for power stations would be a more valuable target if it would take 5 years to recover supply of the component.

From a military point of view, the scorched earth tactic[3] of destroying infrastructure to disrupt an enemy force is out of favour because it also denies the victor from quickly rebuilding and stabilising a country[4]. Instead of blowing up power stations that could take a decade to rebuild, modern military forces would rather destroy a substation on a military base, such that the military base is rendered temporarily less useful. Due to the minor effect caused, within 12 months, the substation could be rebuilt and the the base repurposed for a new military force established by the victor. Invading military forces are not going to have difficulty identifying critical infrastructure used for military purposes which they should target, particularly because of the prevalence of satellite imagery.

[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG142.html

[2] https://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-cold-war-maps/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth

[4] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/infrastr...

karussell 4 years ago |

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).

bertil 4 years ago |

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.

emj 4 years ago | |

If you leave a note anonymously on http://osm.org and then link it here in a reply. I would be happy to add it for you, link to the wikipedia/wikidata page for the power station if there is one. There is a lot that can be tagged if you look at the documentation try to include as much information as possible.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:power%3Dplant

matkoniecz 4 years ago | |

If you want you can simply map it.

Go to openstreetmap.org, sign up for an account, login (top right) and then press the "Edit" button.

There will be offer of tutorial, I recommend going though it.

This in editing: select that you want to add point/area, create it and search for power plant in top left. Select it, add more detail if able and save the edit (save button in top right, then enter description of edit in sidebar on the left and press save button).

Edits go live immediately, but data consumers update with some delay depending on their setup (ranges from up to 60 second delay for ones using minutely updates to "no updates").

---------

See also https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels - there are active communities using IRC, Discord, Slack, Telegram, mailing lists and other communications tools.

Feel free to join them and ask for help!

etcet 4 years ago | |

Check out the about page: https://openinframap.org/about

You probably just need to tag the building "power: plant" on https://www.openstreetmap.org/.

mackman 4 years ago |

Anybody know how much trouble you’d get in cross country skiing or snowshoeing along the routes of these big power lines? They clear all the trees and brush and it looks like it would be a great alternative route to get around in winter. All those no trespassing signs have me spooked.

Mountain_Skies 4 years ago | |

There are various degrees of clear. You might be surprised by how much scrub can grow there between clearances. Also the grade of the land can change quite abruptly. It's not like a railroad right of way where the grade is very limited. There can be significant ravines between pylons. The powerlines don't care because they're up above it all anyway. Pipelines likely have better paths but I suspect those are monitored more closely than power lines.

analog31 4 years ago | |

From what I've observed as a hiker, brush clearance can be touch and go. In some regions it doesn't take many years of neglect to turn a clearing into an impassable thicket. Also, a power line can go practically up the side of a mountain, cross streams and ravines, etc.

jamincan 4 years ago | |

At least where I live in Ontario, the corridors are not necessarily public land and the power distributor only has access to them through an easement.

gkop 4 years ago | |

In my hometown state forest, no trouble.

szundi 4 years ago |

Aren’t these national security secrets?

caseysoftware 4 years ago | |

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.

r0gue808 4 years ago | |

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 4 years ago | |

It was a major blocker when I was writing my dissertation. It would have been WONDERFUL to have this.

justsomehnguy 4 years ago | |

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.

bladelessninja2 4 years ago | | |

That's somehow naive statement. There is a difference between getting full information just with one query and building complicated fail-prune system for weeks/months to analyze data.

fjfaase 4 years ago |

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.

blhack 4 years ago |

This is incredibly detailed. Really neat.

cozzyd 4 years ago |

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 4 years ago | |

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

matkoniecz 4 years ago | | |

See also https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels - there are active communities using IRC, Discord, Slack, Telegram, mailing lists and other communications tools.

Feel free to join them and ask for help!

jcims 4 years ago |

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 4 years ago | |

The data seems to be from OpenStreetMap. Features which do not currently exist are out of scope for OSM.

seb1204 4 years ago | | |

Once under construction they can be added. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lifecycle_prefix

tomrod 4 years ago | | |

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.

pleb_nz 4 years ago |

Like the growth of bacteria on a petri dish

aero-glide2 4 years ago |

Why can't osmand~ scroll as smoothly as this site?

AlexTrask 4 years ago | |

I think that osmand uses vectorial maps by default and this is image tiles.