Maps that show
their working.
A geospatial layer for community researchers, with provenance, uncertainty and consent baked into every pin.
HyveMaps is a thematic mapping tool for organisations who can’t use Google Maps because their data is sensitive, contested, or community-owned. Every layer carries its source, its consent terms, and its uncertainty. In private beta with land councils, health districts and housing-justice researchers.
Provenance is a first-class property.
A health-district researcher is mapping food-access deserts in outer-Melbourne. Each pin carries who collected it, when, with whose consent, and how confident they are.
- Confidence
- 0.78 · medium
- Collected
- 2026-04-14 · field walk
- By
- Field researcher
- Consent
- Anonymised LGA-level
- Method
- StreetComplete + manual audit
Active layers · 4
Demonstration data, pins, layer titles and field notes shown above are illustrative for the screenshot only. Real beta atlases are not public and never will be without explicit consent from the originating community.
Three constraints that shaped it.
Three constraints that shaped HyveMaps. Each is enforced, not optional.
Provenance & consent.
Every layer, pin and polygon carries its source, the date it was collected, the consent terms attached, and a confidence score. If the consent doesn’t cover a use case, the data refuses to render in that view.
Boundaries can disagree.
Cadastral, administrative, and traditional boundaries can disagree, overlap, or simply not exist in the official record. HyveMaps lets multiple boundary layers coexist without forcing one to be the “right” one.
Data sovereignty.
Self-host or community-host. Land councils in the beta run their own instances on their own infrastructure. We never see, copy or back up their data.
Roadmap to v1.0.
Current status of each milestone.
-
Q4 ’25 · done
Atlas authoring tool.
Layer editor, pin tool, boundary import (.geojson, .shp, .csv-with-postcodes). Stable since November.
-
Q1 ’26 · done
Provenance & consent fields.
Required metadata on every layer. Consent enforcement at render time. Tested with three beta partners.
-
Q3 ’26 · in flight
Field-collection app.
iOS & Android companion for offline pin capture in the field. In closed beta with selected partner organisations.
-
Q4 ’26 · next
Public-share atlases.
Read-only embeddable atlases for community-facing publication. Consent rules carry through to the public view.
-
Q1 ’27 · v1.0
General availability.
Self-host stable; managed hosting in Australian region. Free for community organisations.
Every layer carries its source, its consent terms and a confidence score.