The Oskari map application platform is an open-source tool designed to support the creation, display, and distribution of spatial data. Widely used across various sectors, Oskari provides robust functionalities for handling geospatial information, making it a vital asset for public administrations, private companies, and individual developers. At the recent FOSS4G Europe in Tartu we were served with three different updates from the community. There were talks for end-users, for developers, and by one reuser. Before we dive into the updates, let’s just give a quick refresh to the tool.

Oskari is an open-source geospatial framework developed and maintained by the National Land Survey of Finland in collaboration with a broad community of developers and users. The platform enables the integration and sharing of spatial data through interactive web maps, which can be embedded in websites or used in standalone applications. It supports a wide range of data formats and services, ensuring compatibility with various geospatial data sources.

In a case study published here on OSOR four years ago, we saw that the platform's success is rooted in the strong collaboration between public sector entities and open-source contributors. This partnership has fostered a sustainable ecosystem that ensures continuous innovation and long-term viability for Oskari, making it a reliable choice for managing geospatial data in various sectors.

During the two talks, State of Oskari for developers and State of Oskari (for end-users) two things were highlighted in both of the talks, and those were mobile improvements and Remote Procedure Call (RPC) examples.

Mobile support has been improved, with server-side ability to add or exclude features for mobile users. For example, it’s now possible to change the behavior of desktop hover-based interactions for mobile users who are not interacting through a mouse. All these features in the component library for convenient use. For end-users, this results in a slicker and better user experience. Sini Pöytäniemi, Product Owner in National Land Survey of Finland, summarizes “It has been on the wish list for some time, and it wasn’t exactly very useable on mobile earlier. Big changes were made to this so that it is actually useable in mobile, and it works quite nicely.”

The big update here is that Oskari now has an example RPC site where features and interactions can be tried and where the results are pedagogically shown and with convenient links to the full documentation. 

On the horizon is work on migrating the way user-generated content is handled to allow for it to be combined more easily. There is also work taken on migrating to more modern Java. About that, Sami Mäkinen, Hands-on architect and the lead developer at the National Land Survey of Finland says, “One big thing that we have in front of us is migrating to a newer Java version, we’d like to have some help with that” when asked about if there are any specific contributions he was hoping for from the community.

Southwest Finland’s regional open data centre, Lounaistieto, represented by Natalia Räikkönen, GIS Specialist, presented their use of Oskari.  They are making use of the RPC techniques to build the web maps, and example can be seen on: https://kartta.virma.fi/

Oskari is still mostly used in Finland, but with one reuse in Indonesia mentioned by Sini Pöytäniemi, “All the documentation is actually in English. Any one can use it, it isn’t limited geographically” She also highlights the use by Arctic SDI Geoportal, with data from 8 Nordic countries.

All examples can be seen in their well-structured gallery, where also a use as the Icelandic National Geoportal is listed.

Sini Pöytäniemi also gave an overview of the current state of governance. The project has Joint Development Forum - with 7 organizations collaborating and co-founding development which meeting monthly. The National Land Survey is providing a community coordinator while the Joint Development Forum is co-founding a communications coordinator. A Product Steering Committee steers the code.

For more information about Oskari and to join its community, visit oskari.org.