Korea Plans Open Source National Mapping Program

ZDnet Asia reports that Korea is planning an open source national mapping program.

The article suggests that the goal is more about updating and standardizing addressing and it doesn’t seem to make the project “cheap”:

The South Korean Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs has formed a team that assigns street names and building numbers and it is in the process of updating the database (until Nov. 2006). The database is expected to be ready by year 2007.

The initial phase of the project includes the establishment of a centralized center, current situation analysis, the DB standardization process and the final creation of the master DB. This year alone, the project will cost US$37.4 million, with US$45.5 million in 2007, US$29 million in 2008 and another US$27 million in 2009.

The software behind the system is ‘IntraMap/Web’ by KSIC; I could not find an English site for it.