Panoramax, the free and sovereign alternative to Street View

Jean Zeid 7:07 a.m., February 9, 2024

It's time for Jean Zeid's Positive Initiatives, the chronicle of daily innovations. Jean, hello.

This morning, we're going to take photos.  

Can we invent an alternative to Google Street View, the photomapping service which allows you to navigate virtually and in 360° in places located on public roads, in town or in the countryside. Except that to offer this service, you must first be registered to take photos of all the streets and all the paths in France. Other solutions than Google Street View exist, but they are not freely accessible tools like the tools that go with them. Services which generally depend on the goodwill of Gafam for their updating. 

And it is this freedom that the IGN, the National Institute of Geographic and Forestry Information and OpenStreetMap France have been offering since 2022.

What does this duo offer?  

Quite simply to regain sovereignty in terms of photomapping services. Two years ago, IGN and OpenStreetMap launched Panoramax in 2022, a free and sovereign Street View with the aim of establishing a national photomapping base. Of course, it relies on partnerships with public actors, local authorities like Greater Lyon or the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg, large companies like Suez or Veolia. But Panoramax also counts on you and me, volunteer citizens who can improve this cartography in their free time.

How does it work on the ground? 

Panoramax went as simple as possible. We leave the house, we go to the photography field and we take our photos. Then, all you have to do is share it to populate a large common database, open and accessible to everyone. it can be used for different professions and different uses, so I share it. Thus, this allows everyone to save on comings and goings by using the community's photos for their own needs. These photos can be used by you and me to visualize the precise place where we want to go, but it also has professional virtues. These photos can very well be used to analyze the quality of roads or signs, sidewalks or even trees for the companies and services concerned. 

In terms of uses, it is vast. 6 months after its launch, Panoramax, 10 million photos for 100,000 km of road network were shared by this new community of contributors, the creation of a viewer allowing you to move through a base map and see the exact location where the photos were taken.