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Interview: Frank März on OpenFireMap
Frank talks about the history and evolution of OpenFireMap.
Today in our OpenStreetMap (OSM) interview series, we are speaking with Frank März about the story behind OpenFireMap. What started as an effort to replace an outdated, hand-drawn village map has grown into a free map showing fire stations, hydrants, water supply points and defibrillators across dozens of European countries. We spoke with Frank about the project, how AI helped him rebuild it, and his hopes for the future of community mapping.
1. Tell us a bit about who you are and how you first got involved with OpenStreetMap?
I’m Frank März (52) from a small village in Franconia, Germany. I work in network operations for a German mobile operator. I found OpenStreetMap around 2010 as a passionate marathon runner: I started by mapping all the routes and paths around where I live, later the buildings and everything else that was missing. Then I realized that our volunteer fire brigade, in a village of about 1,000 people, still had an ancient hand-drawn map hanging in the fire station. I wondered whether OpenStreetMap could be the basis for a new village and hydrant plan. That question took me from running routes to fire-service mapping.
2. What is OpenFireMap, how did the idea for the project come about, and what motivated you to create a dedicated map for fire services and emergency infrastructure?
OpenFireMap is a free web map that shows fire stations, hydrants, water supply points and defibrillators from OpenStreetMap. It started with that village plan question. I brought it up at the OSM meetup in Nuremberg and got a few people on board. I can barely program, so I didn’t build it, but I gave the impulse, proposed the design and later organized the domain. The first OpenFireMap then ran largely unchanged for about 12 years, operated by the admin of our meetup.
What changed was AI. I had moved to a different department at work and had to get to grips with GitHub, Docker and CI/CD, and OpenFireMap became my learning project for exactly that. In January 2026 I tried to set up a hydrant map purely with vibe coding, and it worked very well. After a few weeks I released a new version, on my own together with AI, and moved my domain over to it. I haven’t looked at a single line of code since. I use the 20-euro plans of Claude and OpenAI, and I’m amazed at what has become possible within a year.
3. What kind of information does OpenFireMap display, and where does the data come from? How does it build on the wider OpenStreetMap database?
OpenFireMap has no database of its own. It’s purely a visualization of OpenStreetMap data, and I’ve always liked that: if someone wants to add or correct something, they do it in OSM and it shows up on the map. For the fire service, the relevant objects are hydrants, suction points, fire ponds and water tanks, plus fire stations as a small extra. Recently I’ve added AEDs. I’m registered with the first-responder app “Region der Lebensretter”, so that topic matters to me, and I’m tinkering with a small side project: photograph an AED, and it’s either added to OSM or, if it’s already there, confirmed as still present.
To keep the map fast, I first set up pre-built vector tiles for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. In a second step I extended that to 40 more European countries. Everywhere else, and for recent changes, the map asks Overpass live.
4. Who uses OpenFireMap, and how can it help in practical situations? Have you come across any particularly interesting examples of how people use the map?
People use it in three ways. At a desk, you choose a place and export a PDF or PNG, for example a village plan; GPX and CSV came later. Our own fire station now has a village plan made this way on the wall. I’m currently working on a special export for printing that draws streets wider than they really are, so a printed map is easier to read. On the phone, you locate yourself and see the nearest hydrants. And some fire-service software, such as the Alarminator app, uses the data.
Feedback has led to real changes. The plant fire brigade of a car manufacturer in Baden-Württemberg had Württemberg shaft hydrants, and there was no symbol for them. I added one, and now the map has it.
There’s also a statistics page. Some regions are very thin; in my valley, with my two neighboring municipalities, I’d say we’ve mapped 99% of all hydrants, even along new roads that aren’t open yet. It’s not an official dispatch map, and the data should be checked locally before operational use.
5. What are the biggest challenges in maintaining OpenFireMap and keeping its data useful and up to date? How can the OpenStreetMap community contribute to the project?
Reliability. The map used to depend entirely on the Overpass API, and as that became less dependable, the map was useless whenever it was down. After a summer break, when I’d rather be outside, I picked it up again at the end of September and set out to fix that: pre-computed data served from Cloudflare, so the map appears within one or two seconds. Overpass is now only a backup. The data for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg is updated daily, the other countries weekly. Building it scared me at first, but it could all be vibe-coded.
Where I’d like help: Android. AI can only judge to a limited extent how things look on phones, and Android doesn’t look like the iPhone. If you use Android and are a bit of a design genius, feedback would be great.
For mapping, I’d like local fire brigades and their youth groups to turn it into an exercise: split the village into quadrants, walk them with phones, and a complete map exists two days later. hydrantenjaeger.de makes that fast: photograph a hydrant, add a few details, upload, and it’s in OSM about 20 seconds later. I’d love to see people use it. A short tutorial video that explains it quickly is on my to-do list, but I haven’t found the time yet. I’m not a big fan of long texts myself, so it will be a video rather than a manual.
6. OpenStreetMap has come a long way since it began. Looking ahead, what do you hope the project will achieve over the next 10 years, and what role do you see OpenFireMap playing in that future?
OSM is a huge project. I love it when people look closely at their surroundings so that the map is really good where they live, and then all sorts of apps use it, even my own employer. It’s a great feeling to see a map and know that about 80% of what’s around me I mapped myself 10 or 12 years ago, and it’s still there.
My wish for the next ten years: that very many fire brigades map their own village and surroundings, so that all hydrants end up in the OpenStreetMap database. That would be really cool.
Where OpenFireMap will be in ten years isn’t that relevant. All of Europe is in already, and the whole world would be possible; the question is just where the server space is. It’s a purely private project, and I don’t want to make money from it. I want to give something back. If someone wants their country, I can set it up within a day. What would help me most is feedback from fire brigades and other users: what’s missing? With AI agents, building it takes one or two evenings, not weeks.
Everything is on GitHub, under the MIT license, so anyone can contribute, or copy it and build something of their own. And I’m a friend of simplicity. Many maps I see based on OSM are completely overloaded, and keeping it simple is my small contribution.
OpenFireMap is a great example of how OpenStreetMap data can be put to practical use, supporting local communities and emergency services. Frank hopes more fire brigades will get involved in mapping their surroundings, helping make essential emergency infrastructure visible and accessible to everyone. Thank you, Frank, for sharing your story and for your contributions to the OpenStreetMap community.
Happy mapping
Please let us know if your community would like to be part of
our interview series
here on our blog. If you are or know of someone we should interview, please get in touch, we’re always looking to promote people doing interesting things with open geo data.
Today in our OpenStreetMap (OSM) interview series, we are speaking with Frank März about the story behind OpenFireMap. What started as an effort to replace an outdated, hand-drawn village map has grown into a free map showing fire stations, hydrants, water supply points and defibrillators across dozens of European countries. We spoke with Frank about the project, how AI helped him rebuild it, and his hopes for the future of community mapping.
1. Tell us a bit about who you are and how you first got involved with OpenStreetMap?
I’m Frank März (52) from a small village in Franconia, Germany. I work in network operations for a German mobile operator. I found OpenStreetMap around 2010 as a passionate marathon runner: I started by mapping all the routes and paths around where I live, later the buildings and everything else that was missing. Then I realized that our volunteer fire brigade, in a village of about 1,000 people, still had an ancient hand-drawn map hanging in the fire station. I wondered whether OpenStreetMap could be the basis for a new village and hydrant plan. That question took me from running routes to fire-service mapping.
2. What is OpenFireMap, how did the idea for the project come about, and what motivated you to create a dedicated map for fire services and emergency infrastructure?
OpenFireMap is a free web map that shows fire stations, hydrants, water supply points and defibrillators from OpenStreetMap. It started with that village plan question. I brought it up at the OSM meetup in Nuremberg and got a few people on board. I can barely program, so I didn’t build it, but I gave the impulse, proposed the design and later organized the domain. The first OpenFireMap then ran largely unchanged for about 12 years, operated by the admin of our meetup.
What changed was AI. I had moved to a different department at work and had to get to grips with GitHub, Docker and CI/CD, and OpenFireMap became my learning project for exactly that. In January 2026 I tried to set up a hydrant map purely with vibe coding, and it worked very well. After a few weeks I released a new version, on my own together with AI, and moved my domain over to it. I haven’t looked at a single line of code since. I use the 20-euro plans of Claude and OpenAI, and I’m amazed at what has become possible within a year.
3. What kind of information does OpenFireMap display, and where does the data come from? How does it build on the wider OpenStreetMap database?
OpenFireMap has no database of its own. It’s purely a visualization of OpenStreetMap data, and I’ve always liked that: if someone wants to add or correct something, they do it in OSM and it shows up on the map. For the fire service, the relevant objects are hydrants, suction points, fire ponds and water tanks, plus fire stations as a small extra. Recently I’ve added AEDs. I’m registered with the first-responder app “Region der Lebensretter”, so that topic matters to me, and I’m tinkering with a small side project: photograph an AED, and it’s either added to OSM or, if it’s already there, confirmed as still present.
To keep the map fast, I first set up pre-built vector tiles for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. In a second step I extended that to 40 more European countries. Everywhere else, and for recent changes, the map asks Overpass live.
4. Who uses OpenFireMap, and how can it help in practical situations? Have you come across any particularly interesting examples of how people use the map?
People use it in three ways. At a desk, you choose a place and export a PDF or PNG, for example a village plan; GPX and CSV came later. Our own fire station now has a village plan made this way on the wall. I’m currently working on a special export for printing that draws streets wider than they really are, so a printed map is easier to read. On the phone, you locate yourself and see the nearest hydrants. And some fire-service software, such as the Alarminator app, uses the data.
Feedback has led to real changes. The plant fire brigade of a car manufacturer in Baden-Württemberg had Württemberg shaft hydrants, and there was no symbol for them. I added one, and now the map has it.
There’s also a statistics page. Some regions are very thin; in my valley, with my two neighboring municipalities, I’d say we’ve mapped 99% of all hydrants, even along new roads that aren’t open yet. It’s not an official dispatch map, and the data should be checked locally before operational use.
5. What are the biggest challenges in maintaining OpenFireMap and keeping its data useful and up to date? How can the OpenStreetMap community contribute to the project?
Reliability. The map used to depend entirely on the Overpass API, and as that became less dependable, the map was useless whenever it was down. After a summer break, when I’d rather be outside, I picked it up again at the end of September and set out to fix that: pre-computed data served from Cloudflare, so the map appears within one or two seconds. Overpass is now only a backup. The data for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg is updated daily, the other countries weekly. Building it scared me at first, but it could all be vibe-coded.
Where I’d like help: Android. AI can only judge to a limited extent how things look on phones, and Android doesn’t look like the iPhone. If you use Android and are a bit of a design genius, feedback would be great.
For mapping, I’d like local fire brigades and their youth groups to turn it into an exercise: split the village into quadrants, walk them with phones, and a complete map exists two days later. hydrantenjaeger.de makes that fast: photograph a hydrant, add a few details, upload, and it’s in OSM about 20 seconds later. I’d love to see people use it. A short tutorial video that explains it quickly is on my to-do list, but I haven’t found the time yet. I’m not a big fan of long texts myself, so it will be a video rather than a manual.
6. OpenStreetMap has come a long way since it began. Looking ahead, what do you hope the project will achieve over the next 10 years, and what role do you see OpenFireMap playing in that future?
OSM is a huge project. I love it when people look closely at their surroundings so that the map is really good where they live, and then all sorts of apps use it, even my own employer. It’s a great feeling to see a map and know that about 80% of what’s around me I mapped myself 10 or 12 years ago, and it’s still there.
My wish for the next ten years: that very many fire brigades map their own village and surroundings, so that all hydrants end up in the OpenStreetMap database. That would be really cool.
Where OpenFireMap will be in ten years isn’t that relevant. All of Europe is in already, and the whole world would be possible; the question is just where the server space is. It’s a purely private project, and I don’t want to make money from it. I want to give something back. If someone wants their country, I can set it up within a day. What would help me most is feedback from fire brigades and other users: what’s missing? With AI agents, building it takes one or two evenings, not weeks.
Everything is on GitHub, under the MIT license, so anyone can contribute, or copy it and build something of their own. And I’m a friend of simplicity. Many maps I see based on OSM are completely overloaded, and keeping it simple is my small contribution.
OpenFireMap is a great example of how OpenStreetMap data can be put to practical use, supporting local communities and emergency services. Frank hopes more fire brigades will get involved in mapping their surroundings, helping make essential emergency infrastructure visible and accessible to everyone. Thank you, Frank, for sharing your story and for your contributions to the OpenStreetMap community.
Happy mapping
Please let us know if your community would like to be part of our interview series here on our blog. If you are or know of someone we should interview, please get in touch, we’re always looking to promote people doing interesting things with open geo data.
Figure 1: North Saskatchewan River alongside the parkway. Parker Ridge (2350 m) and Nigel SE3 (3025 m) in the background.
Figure 2: Multiple landmark features shown on the “Tracestrack Topo” map (2026), with Figure 1 POV on the bottom right.
Figure 3: Highway 11 toward the Saskatchewan River Crossing and the southern half of the Icefields Parkway.
Figure 4: South view of Bow Lake with large scree slopes reaching the lake.
Figure 5: Peyto Lake and its large alluvial fan. To the left, Peyto Peak and its glacier in the background.
Figure 6: Lake Louise and its turquoise waters. Behind me, the “Chateau Lake Louise” and hundreds of tourists like me.
Figure 7: Moraine Lake view taken from the “moraine” crest. Out of frame, hundreds of tourists like me.
Figure 8: Bow River, just a few hundred meters from where we stayed in Lake Louise.
Figure 9: Big Bend viewpoint, looking south toward North Saskatchewan River, and Mount Cirrus (3270 m) on the left.
Figure 10: Icefields Parkway toward Columbia Icefield and the Athabasca Glacier.
Figure 11: The few hundred meters hike to reach the closest point to the Athabasca Glacier that you can do on your own.
Figure 12: The Athabasca Glacier closest view you can reach on your own. Taken where the foot of the glacier was in 2006.
Figure 13: Standard OSM map view from early 2024. Most of the data comes from the Canvec import.
Figure 14: Standard OSM map view from late 2026. Same area as Figure 13, after adding/updating all natural features.