We are happy to announce the creation of the Swiss OpenStreetMap Association during the GEOsummit 2012 in Berne today, June 20th 2012.

SOSM was created to  further the goals of the OpenStreetMap movement, to strengthen the contacts with authorities and industry, to facilitate the activities  of OSM community members in Switzerland and to represent the Swiss OSM community in other organisations.

OpenStreetMap has always been a grassroots, at sometimes anarchistic, movement. SOSM sees its role as providing some structure when needed and remaining as lightweight and as unobstrusive as possible.

The initial board is composed of Sarah Hoffmann, Stephane Henriod, Thomas Ineichen and Simon Poole.

OpenStreetMap Switzerland in Numbers

The OpenStreetMap data set for Switzerland contains

• over 44’000 km of roads
• over 46’000 km of agricultural and forest tracks
• over 7’000 km of paved bicycle and foot paths
• over 17’000 km of unpaved paths

More than 6’000 active OSM community members gathered the data and the data volume is growing over 20% per year.