Panoramax

Panoramax is a project to collect and display street-level imagery. The project is implemented as free/open source software and allows the crowdsourcing of images, which are then openly licensed. The project was started in 2022 by the French National Geographic Institute (Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière, IGN) and the French OpenStreetMap (OSM) chapter. It was designed and developed by a state-owned start-up and is updated and maintained by a community of volunteers and IGN staff. As a free & open source alternative to Google Street View, Panoramax is a federated system that allows individuals and organizations to host their own instances for image hosting.

Panoramax

Type of site	Crowdsourcing of street-level imagery
Country of origin	France
URL	panoramax.fr
Commercial	No
Users	621 contributors

History

In 2021, the IGN launched a consultation on "geocommons".^[1] Initially, the project was designed to respond to the problems encountered by local authorities and other French stakeholders.^[2][3]

OpenStreetMap France responded to this consultation, proposing the creation of an open database for street-level images.^[4]

In April 2022, the IGN launched their call for participation for three "geocommons"^[2][5] including the proposal of OSM France.^[6][7] In October 2022, Panoramax was launched as part of the "Geocommons Factory".^[8]

In June 2024, Panoramax won a grant by the NLNet Foundation as part of the NGI0 Commons Fund, which is supported by the European Commission as part of the Next Generation Internet program.^[9] In the same year, the project also gained more media attention, especially in public and private French-speaking media, including Franceinfo,^[10] France Bleu,^[11] Europe 1^[12] and ZDNet.^[13]

Name

The name "Panoramax" was decided after a proposal phase and vote by 48 community members.^{[14][15][16][17]}

Budget and Team

The project's budget is €500,000, and 6 people work on the project.^[18]

Number of photos

In April 2024, 17.7 million photos were contributed by 284 contributors.^[19] As of December 27, 2024, over 43 million images have been added by 621 contributors^[20]

Taking pictures from a boat.

In April 2024, 284 contributors took part, including citizen volunteers, companies (Suez & Véolia) and local communities such as Greater Lyon, Strasbourg.^{[19][21][22][23]}

Open source & data

All components of the Panoramax infrastructure are openly licensed.^[24] Furthermore, images published using the software are openly licensed and allow the free re-use of the images,^[18] unlike proprietary projects such as Google Street View, which are controlled by Google and thus largely prevent the re-use of images.^[25][26]

Images are hosted and published under open licenses. The Panoramax instance of OSM France publishes images under a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0, with an added authorization to generate non-photographic data under an open database license (ODbL).^{[14][27][18][19]} The French IGN instance publishes images using the etalab-2.0 license ("Licence Ouverte").^[14][18][19]

Contributing to Panoramax

There are multiple ways to contribute and access images, including the website, a command-line interface and API, as well as a mobile application that is currently in development.^[28] During the import, each uploaded photo is subjected to image recognition to identify parts of the image that should be anonymized (i.e. blurring faces and license plates), to comply with the privacy regulations such as the French CNIL.^[29]

API

An API allows downloading and searching for images, for example to distribute them to tools such as viewers. It is based on the STAC standard, to ensure interoperability with existing tools.^[30]

Use cases

Use cases include being able to monitor conditions of the roads and street furniture, signs, trees, overhead cables, or to verify compliance with regulations on advertising displays.^{[18][23][22][25]} The departmental fire and rescue service ("service départemental d’incendie et de secours) uses Panoramax to map fire hydrants and tracks that can be used in cases of wildfires.^[18][31]