2026-08-30 –, Guadeloupe Language: English
Over the past year, several Dutch governmental organizations collaborated to initiate Panorama, a new open street‑level imagery effort. This talk explains how the project was set up, how data collection and processing were organized, and how the resulting imagery strengthens public digital autonomy. Similar to developments in France—where IGN has taken a leading role in producing sovereign geospatial data—Panorama aims to reduce dependency on commercial suppliers and ensure long‑term control over essential imagery.
In 2025–2026, a group of Dutch governmental organizations began developing a Dutch Panoramax instance, an initiative to produce openly accessible street‑level imagery for public use. The project aims to create a sustainable, privacy‑aware dataset that supports a wide range of governmental and societal tasks while increasing autonomy over critical geospatial infrastructure.
This session provides an overview of the project’s first 12 months: how the collaboration was formed, how imagery collection was organized. A key theme is digital sovereignty. Several European countries are moving in this direction—for example, France’s national mapping agency IGN has invested heavily in producing sovereign, open geospatial datasets. The Netherlands follows a similar philosophy by reducing reliance on commercial imagery providers and ensuring long‑term control over data availability, licensing, and continuity.
The talk also discusses the challenges encountered—technical, organizational, legal, and privacy‑related—and the approaches taken to address them. It concludes with next steps and open questions, offering insights for other regions exploring open, self‑governed imagery initiatives.
Panorama NL: Building Public‑Sector Street‑Level Imagery for Digital Sovereignty
Talk keywords:Panoramax, Traffic Signs, Maximum Speed
Bas Bussink is a Product Owner for the Nationaal Wegenbestand (NWB), the official digital road network of the Netherlands. The NWB provides a standardized and authoritative description of the national road infrastructure and serves as a reference dataset for public authorities and data users. In his role, Bas coordinates the definition, prioritization, and maintenance of the product, working with stakeholders and development teams to ensure the data remains consistent, accurate, and usable for policy, analysis, and operational purposes.