Geo source recommendations by data category

living

Single source of truth for which open geodata source to self-host for which job, consumed by:

  • Koder Atlas (services/foundation/atlas) — the self-hosted geodata data plane

    (tilesroutinggeocoding/imagery). Each capability picks its Primary source here.

  • Kode / AI agents — read this when deciding which geo backend/source to wire.
  • Humans — review on the cadence above; promotedemote per coveragefreshness/quality.

This is the geo instance of the generic stack-RFC-017 Self-Hosted Source Catalog & Radar: the radar discovers/evaluates new open sources periodically; the ranked verdicts land here. Imagery was the pilot (atlas#008); this file generalizes the pattern to every geo category.

How to read: "Primary" is what Koder Atlas self-hosts today (or should). "Alternatives" are valid open options with different trade-offs. "Why not the others" keeps future revisions informed, not impulsive. Status: incorporada (live in Atlas) · candidata (evaluated, not yet wired) · descartada (rejected, reason given). License must be opencompatible (ODbL / CC-BY / CC-BY-SA / CC0 / PDDL / CDLA) — paidclosed = descartada by default per self-hosted-first.kmd.

1. Base map — vector tiles · capability tiles

Primary OpenStreetMap → Planetiler → OpenMapTiles schema (.mbtilespmtiles), served by atlasd `v1/tiles`
License / coverage / freshness ODbL · world · OSM minutely diffs (refresh: re-tile affected region)
Status incorporada — brazil.mbtiles (2,8 G, 16 layers) live (atlas#001 slice A, 2026-06-25)
Alternatives Shortbread schema (Geofabrik), Overture Maps (CDLA-permissive; merged OSM+Meta+Microsoft+Esri)
Why not Overture (yet) Promising quality+licensing; evaluate as a complement (buildingsplaces) once the OSM base is stable. Not the base because OSM is the canonical editable source + the routinggeocoding share its graph.

2. Routing — road network + ETA · capability route

Primary OSM → OSRM (algorithm MLD), served by atlasd /v1/route
License / coverage / freshness ODbL · world · OSM diffs → re-extract/customize per region
Status incorporada — Brazil routing live (atlas#001 slice B, 2026-06-25); SP→Rio 433 km/~5h35 validated
Why MLD not CH MLD allows --segment-speed-file live-traffic updates at customize time without re-extract (atlas#004 decision) — the path to a traffic-aware ETA.
Alternatives Valhalla (tiled, good for multimodal + dynamic costing), GraphHopper (fast, flexible), OpenRouteService (ORS, isochrones)
Why not Valhalla (yet) Stronger for live-traffic + multimodal; revisit when a traffic source (§7) lands — Valhalla's dynamic costing may beat OSRM segment-speed for that. For free-flow car routing, OSRM is leaner and already wired.

3. Geocoding — address/place search + reverse · capability geocode

Primary (base) OSM → Nominatim (4.4), served by atlasd /v1/search + /v1/reverse
License / coverage / freshness ODbL · world · Nominatim replication
Status incorporada (em curso) — Brazil import running (atlas#001 slice C, 2026-06-25)
BR quality booster CNEFE/IBGE house numbers (§8) — Brazil has real door numbers NominatimOSM lacks; the geocoder-engine decision (PeliasPhoton vs Nominatim+CNEFE enrichment) is atlas#006, to be decided against the Nominatim BR baseline once the import settles.
Alternatives (engine) Photon (ES-based, typo-tolerant, autocomplete; OSM data), Pelias (modular, multi-source: OSM+OpenAddresses+WhosOnFirst+CNEFE)
Why the engine is still open Nominatim is the proven base; Photon adds autocomplete/typo-tolerance; Pelias ingests CNEFE natively for BR door numbers. Decide in atlas#006 — don't pre-commit.

4. Satellite / aerial imagery · capability satellite

Primary Sentinel-2 (Copernicus) cloudless — e.g. EOX s2cloudless raster tiles
License / coverage / freshness CC-BY (Copernicus) · world · periodic mosaics (yearly cloudless)
Status candidata — Karavan already uses EOX s2cloudless (KARAVAN_SAT_URL); fold into Atlas as a satellite overlay (incremental, no reimport)
Alternatives Esri World Imagery (descartada — not open), NASA GIBS (MODIS/VIIRS, lower res), Landsat (USGS, open, coarser)
Why Sentinel-2 Highest-res open optical imagery, self-mirrorable; the open answer to Google/Esri satellite layers.

5. Street-level imagery · capability imagery

Primary Mapillary (Meta) — Graph API v4 + coverage vector tiles, served by atlasd `v1imagery