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Any geographical information software (GIS) offer tools to create spatial data, from scratch or by copying / digitalizing sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geographic_information_...

Then you can style them, and design a map, using vector drawing software like Inkscape.

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OpenLayers also provides editing capabilities. This is used for example in the OpenStreetMap project.

Note that his requires writing support (WFS-T or similar) on server side. However, the typical map servers such as GeoServer and Deegree all do support WFS-T.

Yes OpenLayers is the leading OS project for web maps, in my opinion. PostGIS/PostgreSQL DB backend is also used often to offer writing/modification, besides WFS-T. But to draw/digitize the spatial data, it could be more practical to use a desktop software, instead of a web app.

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