Singapore's historical street maps to be released to public for the first time

SINGAPORE - The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) will be releasing 23 editions of historical street maps to the public for the very first time on Sept 1 this year.

These maps, dating from 1954 to 2009, are downloadable as images and will be available for free on OneMap, an integrated map system for government agencies to deliver location-based services and information. Users can use such street map data to generate geovisualizations, wrote SLA in a statement today.

The public can use the maps on its own or with other sources. The maps can be used to showcase or chart Singapore's growth over the years in terms of town and urban development as well as transportation network, among others.

The launch of the historical street maps is in conjunction with Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore's (IDA) "Data in the City: Visualisation Challenge" for Singapore's 50th year.

SLA said it hopes to have the public tell Singapore's story about its change and development through data visualisation. Each digital visualisation must use at least one government data from data.gov.sg or OneMap to depict an aspect of Singapore and the average Singaporean life.

SLA chief executive Vincent Hoong said: "We hope the public will find these maps useful. We encourage Singaporeans to generate interesting geo-visualizations of Singapore's development over the years to commemorate SG50."

ssandrea@sph.com.sg