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Introduction

Welcome to this preview of the Overture Data Schema which currently focuses on buildings, places, transportation, and admin data layers. We've focused on designing a data schema that is easy for developers to quickly understand and use in building map products. You will find a higher-level overview of the schema under each Theme, or view the technical details and example implementations under the Schema Reference.

Please engage in feedback on GitHub; we really appreciate your input to improve future iterations.

Principles​

Address the core, enable the periphery. The Overture schema doesn't solve every problem. It describes fully-formed solutions only for the most fundamental use cases ("the core") while enabling less common use cases ("the periphery") via extensibility.

Invent across the gap. Many excellent solutions including published standards, best practices, and open-source tools already exist and are well-understood in the community. The Overture schema reuses these existing solutions to maximize compatibility and focus our efforts on solving unaddressed high-priority pain points.

Backward-compatible is forward-compatible. No design is future-proof, but good designs maintain relevance by adding features without breaking existing use cases. The Overture schema can be enhanced in a backward-compatible way.

Always open. The Overture schema and format aim for compatibility with free and open-source tools and technologies and avoid depending on closed-source or proprietary tools and technologies.

Key Specifications​

  1. The Overture Data Schema is documented in JSON Schema, a widely used, machine-readable schema declaration language for JSON documents.
  2. We use GeoJSON as a mental model. The final format for Overture deliveries is still to be defined.
  3. Property names use camelCase as described in the Google JSON Style Guide.
  4. Feature Geometries follow the OGC Simple Feature Access specifications.
  5. Measurements use SI units (e.g. meters for building heights) and local units for regulations and restrictions (e.g. speed limits in mph in the US and km/h in Germany).

License​

Overture Maps Schema is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.