Smarty advances open mapping with Overture

Maps are becoming infrastructure.

They power routing and logistics, insurance decisions, real estate applications, emergency response, AI systems, business intelligence, and countless other technologies that depend on understanding where things exist in the real world.

As those use cases expand globally, organizations need more reliable ways to combine and identify the same places across datasets and build applications without repeatedly solving the same fundamental mapping problems.

That’s one reason Smarty has joined the Overture Maps Foundation as a Contributor member and the Linux Foundation as a Silver member.

For us, these memberships represent an opportunity to participate directly in the conversations shaping the future of open mapping, contribute our expertise in accurate address data, and collaborate with organizations working toward a more connected and interoperable geospatial ecosystem.

But the larger goal goes beyond maps themselves. Better location data helps people and technology understand the physical world more clearly. When the foundations are accurate and easier to connect, developers, researchers, businesses, governments, and innovators can spend less time untangling basic location problems and more time solving the problems that actually move all of us forward.

What is the Overture Maps Foundation?

The Overture Maps Foundation is an open-data initiative bringing together software developers, data experts, cartographic engineers, product teams, and other organizations to develop reliable, easy-to-use, and interoperable spatial data.

Founded in 2022 by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom and hosted by the Linux Foundation, Overture is building shared foundational map datasets that organizations can use as a common starting point for mapping applications and geospatial analysis. Their work includes common schemas, regularly updated datasets, and the Global Entity Reference System (GERS), which provides stable identifiers for real-world geographic entities.

Organizations around the world collect enormous amounts of geospatial data, but combining that information into something that’s useful can be difficult when datasets describe locations differently, use different schemas, or lack shared identifiers.

Open mapping initiatives like Overture make that information easier to connect and use.

And that aligns closely with the problems Smarty is working to solve every day.

Why Smarty joined Overture Maps

Smarty has spent years helping organizations answer one deceptively difficult question:

Where, exactly, is this address?

An address might appear to be a simple concept to humans, but applications require significantly more structure. 

Addresses can be: 

• Incomplete 
• Incorrectly formatted 
• Fraudulent/synthetic
• Duplicated 
• Outdated 
• Non-postal
• Or, represented differently between countries/data providers.

Those inconsistencies become even more important when an address needs to connect with other information about a property, building, business, customer, road, administrative area, or geographic feature.

That makes accurate address data an important part of the broader geospatial data ecosystem. 

Address data is also the kind of complexity that shouldn't have to be solved from scratch by every organization that needs to understand a location.

We want teams building the next generation of logistics platforms, AI applications, insurance models, public services, mapping tools, and technologies we haven't imagined yet to be able to focus their energy on the problems they're uniquely equipped to solve. 

If Smarty can absorb more of the complexity surrounding addresses and contribute that expertise to a stronger geospatial foundation, everyone building on top of it gets a better place to start.

That is a significant part of why participating in Overture matters to us.

As an Overture Contributor member, Smarty can participate in working groups and technical discussions around areas such as addresses, locations, and buildings. That gives our team an opportunity to contribute what we’ve learned from working with address data around the world while collaborating with other organizations tackling different pieces of the mapping puzzle.

Smarty’s CEO, Jonathan Oliver, explained:

“Accurate location data underpins business success in nearly every industry. Open, interoperable standards like the ones Overture is building matter so much, especially as mapping needs stretch globally. Smarty brings expertise in accurate address data to the table, and we’re eager to support the foundation’s mission to advance global, open geospatial infrastructure.”

He added that Smarty looks forward to collaborating with others in the geospatial industry to help create a more connected and trustworthy map of the world.

Why interoperable spatial data matters

No single company possesses all the information necessary to describe the physical world.

One organization may have excellent building footprints. 

Another may understand roads. 

Another may maintain information about businesses and points of interest. 

Smarty has experienced insight into address nuances and precise location intelligence.

The challenge is making those datasets work together.

Interoperable spatial data helps developers and organizations combine this information from multiple sources without having to rebuild connections between datasets every time.

Overture is approaching that challenge through shared data schemas and GERS, its system of stable identifiers for geographic entities. Those identifiers can provide a common reference point, making it easier to attach additional information to the same real-world place.

That kind of interoperability can support everything from mapping and logistics to analytics and emerging AI applications.

It can also free organizations to spend more time doing the work they're uniquely qualified to do.

That's ultimately what strong infrastructure should accomplish. The best foundations fade into the background. They quietly remove friction so the people building on top of them can think bigger, move faster, and tackle more consequential problems.

Address data may represent only one piece of that foundation, but it's a piece Smarty knows deeply. Helping make that piece more dependable can clear the way for progress much farther downstream.

Open mapping works better through collaboration

One of the things we find most compelling about Overture is that it’s collaborative.

The foundation now includes 50 organizations spanning technology, government, academia, nonprofits, mapping, transportation, geospatial technology, and other industries. 

Members include organizations such as Meta, Microsoft, TomTom, Uber, Grab, Tripadvisor, and many others contributing data, expertise, and real-world signals to improve shared map infrastructure by leaning into diverse talents.

They’re publishing a large dataset, and that information needs to remain accurate, understandable, interoperable, and adaptable as the physical world evolves.

Different members bring different expertise to that challenge.

Smarty brings years of experience validating, standardizing, enriching, and geocoding address data. Other members bring expertise in transportation, buildings, imagery, points of interest, government data, artificial intelligence, and other areas.

Bringing those unique perspectives and areas of focus together creates opportunities to solve problems that are much more difficult (and dare we say impossible) for any one organization to tackle proficiently independently.

No member has to be an expert in every piece of the map. That's the point.

Each organization can bring what it knows best, contribute it to something larger, and benefit from the expertise others bring in return. 

Our membership also strengthens Smarty's commitment to open source

Joining Overture has also brought Smarty closer to the organization that hosts it: the Linux Foundation.

Smarty is now a Silver member of the Linux Foundation, one of the world's largest organizations supporting open-source communities and collaborative software development.

Linux Foundation membership gives our teams additional opportunities to participate in open-source communities, events, technical discussions, and education across a much broader technology ecosystem. 

For our developers in particular, membership reinforces what's already important to Smarty: participation in the broader technical communities that build much of the infrastructure that modern software depends on.

It's also another way for us to put our support for open technology into practice.

Helping build a more connected map of the world

Smarty joining the Overture Maps Foundation is about contributing to a stronger foundation for understanding the physical world.

Not every developer should have to become an address expert. Not every company building a routing platform, risk model, AI system, logistics network, or new geospatial application should have to solve the same foundational location problems before it can begin solving the problem it actually exists to address.

That's where we believe Smarty can help.

We know addresses.

We know how messy global address data can become, how difficult it can be to connect one representation of a location to another, how important precision is, and how much downstream technology depends on getting that foundation right.

If we can absorb some of that complexity, share what we've learned, and help make location data more reliable and interoperable, other innovators can spend more of their time pushing their own fields forward.

That's the bigger opportunity we see in Overture.

Reliable open map data, interoperable schemas, shared geographic identifiers, and cross-organizational collaboration can help technology better understand the world. And when technology understands the world better, the people building with it have more room to solve harder problems, create better systems, and develop things none of us have thought of yet.

As part of the Overture Maps Foundation and broader Linux Foundation community, Smarty gets to contribute one piece of that future.

We're excited and ready to do our part.