Technology

Overture Maps

Overture Maps is a collaborative open-data initiative delivering structured, production-ready global map layers with stable entity tracking.

Backed by the Linux Foundation and tech giants like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and TomTom, Overture Maps solves the fragmentation of geospatial data. The project normalizes crowdsourced, government, and proprietary inputs into a unified, high-quality schema across core themes (including over 2 billion building footprints, global administrative divisions, and detailed transportation networks). By utilizing the Global Entity Reference System (GERS), Overture assigns stable, unique IDs to real-world features, allowing developers to cleanly link external business data to the map without manual reconciliation. The entire database is structured in cloud-native GeoParquet, making it fast to query via DuckDB or pull directly into GIS pipelines.