Some of you might already know that OpenStreetMap released a first bulk GPS point dataset last weekend. It contains almost 2.8 milliard (or for readers in the US 2.8 billion) points and is provided in its raw format, which means that only coordinate information is available for each point. Unfortunately it does not include any additional information or metadata. You can read more about it at the OSM Foundation Blog.

The first idea that came to my mind was a simple comparison analysis to answer the following questions: Where are all those points located and which country has the most GPS points? In a first try I conducted some results that showed that all points are distributed over 238 countries. For my analysis I used the OSM Mapnik world boundaries from the wiki. As you can see in the following pie chart, nearly 21% of the points are located in Russia (about 570 million points) and another 18% in Germany (about 500 million points). Does Russia have so many GPS points because of the country size or is the community just exceptionally active with GPS devices? However, the strange thing is that Germany is, with about 18%, “only” on the second place this time, weird isn’t it? 😉

I think overall these are some quite interesting numbers. We all hope to see some more metadata information in the OSM GPS point dataset soon.

thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis & Good luck for next week!

*UPDATE* April 11th, 2012
The following map shows the OSM GPS points per 1000km²:

The second map shows the OSM GPS points per 1000 inhabitans:

Many blog posts reported in the last few weeks about Google’s changes to their Google Maps API and the new usage limits. If a website that implemented the Google Maps API receives too much traffic or hits e.g. more than 25,000 per day, charges will apply [1]. This news caused some websites to start looking for alternatives and some of them switched to the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project. You can read more about how and why you should also switch to OSM on the great switch2osm.org webpage.

As maybe some of you already know two prominent examples that switched to OSM within the past two weeks are Foursquare and Apple. You can read more about Foursquare’s switch here and about Apple here. Richard Fairhurst wrote a few days ago (on March 8th [2]) that the OSM Project was experiencing a nice boost in several categories such as:

• more map tiles than usual that have been requested
• new members on the OSM IRCs asking on how to make changes to the OSM data
• a higher peak of OSM publicity
• and as Kai Krueger [3] mentioned it seemed that several new users contributed to OSM.

I would like to add a few numbers especially to the last point mentioned above. Foursquare announced their switch to OSM on Feb. 29th, 2012. Before this announcement the OSM project would usually experience a growth of around 500 (+/- 200) new registered members every day in February. Out of these new members approximately 180 (+/- 50) contribute their first edit in OSM. Overall around 2100 +/- 100 members were active each day in February [4].

However, these numbers changed the first day after the Foursquare announcement. The OSM project had an increase of around 1600 new members during that day (March 1st), and on the second day about 1100 new members joined OSM. On March 3rd the numbers went down to the usual 600 new registered members again. Out of those newly registered members during the first day after the Foursquare announcement about 700, at the second day about 450 and on March 3rd 250 members started to contribute to the project.

After Apple switched to OSM on March 8th the daily new member numbers started to increase again. On March 8th 1400, March 9th 1800 and yesterday 1000 new members registered to the OSM project. About 560 of the new members that joined on March 8th, 780 that joined on March 9th and 400 members that joined yesterday started to actively contribute to the project [5].

The following picture from OSMstats shows the increase in the amount of daily active OSM members:

Source: http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com

So far we can say that due to the announcements the OSM project gets an above average boost on new registered members. It looks like more active users contribute to the OSM project each day, which is a good development! We will see within the next few days and weeks, if more people will not only use the OSM data but also contribute new objects …

thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis

[1] “How much will excess map loads purchased online cost?”
[2] OSM-talk Maillling-List: “Nice problem to have”
[3] OSM-talk Maillling-List: “Nice problem to have”
[4] OSMstats: Statistics of the free wiki world map (accessed on March 5th, 2012)
[5] OSMstats: Statistics of the free wiki world map (accessed on March 11th, 2012)

The OpenStreetMap project will possibly finalize its license change on April 1st 2012. There are certain concerns in the community about possible data losses and to keep them as little as possible, several remapping activities have been started. A really nice overview of “Remapping principles” and “Tools to help you” can be found here.

Frederik’s OSMInspector (OSMI) and Simon’s CLEANMAP are two very handy remapping tools. Both display data that will likely be removed after April 1st due to the fact that this data was collected by contributors that did not accept the license change. In Germany you will find several areas that are affected by these changes and might even leave some new blank spots in the map. But what impact do these changes have on the total length in kilometers per street category in Germany?

You can find several files regarding the OSMI license change view at a Geofabrik server here. Based on the “ways” shape file that you can find there it is possible to calculate the total length of the ways, which will likely be removed with the license change. However, sadly the “ways” shape file does not include any “highway” attribute, but luckily it includes the OSM IDs. This means that to be able to do a Germany street network analysis you will have to download the Geofabrik Germany OSM *.pbf file. By applying a short script you can get all OSM way IDs in Germany with their highway=* key/value pair. Combining these with the “ways” shapefile allows us to calculate the total lengths of each highway type for “Germany” (based on the Geofabrik extract!).

The following image shows the results of a first attempt to visualize the values per street category. Overall this means that based on the current (January 15th 2012) license agreement/disagreement situation about 5.4% (94000 km) of the current street network in Germany will be removed after the license change in April. The relative difference for each highway type lies between 3-8%. Last week (Jan. 7th, 2012) the total amount in Germany was 5.9% and 103000 km.

The OSMI License Change view contains not only the data that will potentially be removed in the future but also some information on two additional feature-types: Features, which have been modified and features which have been modified in some minor way by a contributor that declines the license change. In the first case we have a total street network length of about 58000 km that is affected and in the second case about 17000 km. Remember, these numbers only reflect the situation in Germany! You can find more information about the different feature types here: “Understanding the Colour Scheme“.

Notice: This was a short hack done last night, but I think those numbers look realistic. Can anyone confirm this for Germany? I am very curious how and if these numbers will decrease in the next few weeks. What do you guys think?

thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis

Last weekend Frederik and Richard asked me if I could give some additional information on the „How did you contribute to OpenStreetMap?“ webpage. So here we go. Below the prior, familiar chart which shows the contributions per month, you will find two new charts. The first one shows the number of changesets per weekday and the second one the number of changesets per hour.

Additionally I added an output that roughly estimates what type of mapper the contributor is, based on his/her number of contributions (changesets). However, I will give no warranty regarding the group or type of mapper that each individual contributor falls into and I think you will figure out the different groups of mappers by yourself anyway 😉

The following picture highlights the new things on my webpage:

Most of you already know it, you will find “How Did You Contribute to OpenStreetMap?” here: http://hdyc.neis-one.org

thx @ Frederik & Richard for the idea
thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis

*Update* (2020-06-11) What are the different requirements for your #HDYC type of #mapper? See

Due to some requests by some German OpenStreetMap contributors, here a German blogpost about the results of the article: “The Street Network Evolution of Crowdsourced Maps: OpenStreetMap in Germany 2007–2011.” By Pascal Neis, Dennis Zielstra & Alexander Zipf. 2012. Future Internet 4, no. 1: 1-21. (doi:10.3390/fi4010001) Link: http://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/4/1/1/

Bemerkung: Im Folgenden sind ausgewählte Ergebnisse und Diagramme aus dem englischen Artikel dargestellt/zusammengefasst. Bei weiterem Interesse bitte das Original Journal Paper lesen. Es beinhaltet bei weitem mehr Informationen und Abbildungen!

Das OpenStreetMap (OSM) Projekt ist das bekannteste Projekt im Bereich Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). Weltweit beteiligen sich mehrere hundert tausend Mitglieder um Informationen für eine „freie“ Geodatenbank zu sammeln. Der Zuwachs der Daten ist weltweit recht heterogen, Deutschland zählt aber global zu eine der aktivsten Länder und die Anzahl der Projektbeteiligten steigt von Jahr zu Jahr. Aktuell (Juni 2011) haben insgesamt mehr als 40000 unterschiedliche Mitglieder zum Deutschland Datensatz beigetragen. Wie in der folgenden Abbildung zu sehen, haben unterschiedliche Mengen von Mitgliedern, die drei OSM Objektarten (Node, Way & Relation) in Deutschland erzeugt. Eine weitere wichtige Information ist in der Abbildung ebenfalls zu sehen: 98% der Punkte wurden von ca. 8500 Mitgliedern, 98% der Linien von ca. 7500 und 98% der Relations auf ca. 2600 Mitglieder generiert (wenn man den letzten Eigentümer als Ersteller bewertet).

(c) MDPI

In folgender Abbildung ist die Entwicklung des Gesamtstraßennetzes für Deutschland für die vergangenen vier Jahre (2007-2011) zu sehen. Die vielen unterschiedlichen Straßenkategorien wurden aus Übersichtsgründen und für bessere Untersuchungs- und Vergleichsmethoden in vier Gruppen zusammengefasst (Autobahn/Schnellstraßen, Kreisstraße/Gemeidestraße, Straßen an/in Wohngebieten und sonstige wie Service oder Feld-/Waldwege).

(c) MDPI

Verfolgt man den Wachstum der unterschiedlichen Kategorien, ist zu erkennen, dass ab einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt manche Kategorien nicht mehr weiter zunehmen. Daraus lässt sich ableiten, ab wann eine Kategorie annährend „komplett“ erfasst gewesen sein dürfte oder wo noch neue Straßen hinzukommen. Bei diesem ersten Vergleich ist aber folgendes zu beachten: Der Datensatz von TomTom eignet sich nur für einen Vergleich des Wegenetzes für die Autonavigation (also drei der vier Kategorien). Die Kategorie „Sonstige Wege“kann nur bedingt im Vergleich berücksichtigt werden. In der vierten Kategorie hat OSM ein bereits viel höheres Wegenetz als der kommerzielle Anbieter. Basierend auf den eben erwähnten Annahmen und dem Vergleich mit den TomTom Kategoriestraßenlängen kommen wir zu folgenden Ergebnissen:

1. Autobahnen/Schnellstraßen waren bereits Mitte 2008 komplett erfasst
2. Mitte 2009 waren Kreisstraßen/Gemeindestraßen in Deutschland erfasst
3. Straßen in/an Wohngebieten sind noch nicht vollständig erfasst
4. Ende 2009 hatte OSM bereits mehr „Sonstige Wege“ als der kommerzielle Datensatz von TomTom
5. In der Gesamtsumme des Wegenetzes hat OSM seit Mitte 2010 TomTom übertroffen. Wobei hier sicherlich die vielen Feld- und Waldwege für OSM ein Vorteil sind.
6. Aktuell (Juni 2011) wird in OSM Deutschland größtenteils nur noch vereinzelt am Wegennetz an und in Wohngebieten und vermehrt am sonstigen Wegenetz gearbeitet (Wald-, Wiesen- und Feldwegen).

Die Entwicklung der einzelnen Straßenkategorien im Vergleich zum TomTom Datensatz ist in der folgenden Abbildung zu sehen.

(c) MDPI

Damit hat sich in Deutschland aktuell (Juni 2011) das OSM Straßennetz für die Autonavigation bis auf 9% an vergleichbare Datensätze herangearbeitet und besitzt im Bereich des Gesamtwegenetzes sogar über 27% mehr Informationen. Durch den aktuellen Zuwachs in den fehlenden Straßenkategorien dürfte OSM die noch offene Differenz im Straßennetz bis Mitte/Ende 2012 ausgleichen.

Neben dem Wegenetz wurden auch die Gesamtzahlen der Abbiegevorschriften pro Straßenkategorie miteinander verglichen.

(c) MDPI

Wie im oberen Bild zu sehen ist, ist die Differenz zwischen TomTom und OSM nicht gering. Damit sind aktuell mehr als fünfmal so viele Abbiegevorschriften bei TomTom für Deutschland verfügbar im Vergleich zu OSM. Die Anzahl von Abbiegevorschriften steigt zwar stetig bei OSM, trotzdem dürfte es vermutlich nach jetzigem Stand und Zuwachs noch mehrere Jahre dauern bis OSM hier aufschließen kann.

Der komplette (englische) Artikel mit weiteren Untersuchungen und Abbildungen ist hier kostenfrei herunterladbar: http://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/4/1/1/

thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis

The German OpenStreetMap project webpage has been online for three years now. During these years several small updates have been made to the page. But it is about time to create a complete new webpage with a “state of the art” layout and style. Jonas created the first drafts of a possible new design of the site a while ago. Unfortunately he hasn’t had enough time to finish his work, but luckily Fabian and Pascal came up with a new webpage. Both of them considered Jonas first draft during the development and expanded it with their own ideas.

The new site is based on HTML, CSS and Twitter-bootstrap. Most of the content has been taken from the old webpage with minor improvements. In their opinion the biggest change lies within the way the users are welcomed to the page with information such as: “What is OpenStreetMap?“, “How can I help?” or “How can I use the data?“. The following image shows the important changes made to the welcome-page:

The map has moved to a different web location, but on the welcome-page you will find a large icon that is linked to the map. Similar to the old map, all German local groups are displayed as an overlay. Furthermore, they integrated the OSM Nominatim address search and two buttons in the header of the page, so users can notify the community about bugs or edit the map.

A big shout out to all the people who gave us their feedback (Jonas, Jochen, Frederik, Marc, Matthias & the WN-Team). Special thanks to Fabian who implemented most of the new site.

You can find the new webpage starting from today at the old URL: http://openstreetmap.de
We hope that you like it! What do you think?

Einen deutschen Blog Post findet ihr hier: http://blog.openstreetmap.de/2011/11/neue-osmde-webseite/

thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis

Really great news for all our non-European OpenStreetMap.org Mappers: Since last month, the OSM Routing View is available for the whole world. You can read more in Frederik’s blog post. Yesterday he sent me the latest results of the view and I did some analysis with it. To all new readers: you can find more information about the OSM Inspector (OSMI) here. The Routing View within the OSMI “shows problems in the data, related to routing and navigation” (direct link).

However, here are the new *worldwide* stats for November 2011: we have a total of about 1,3 Mio errors. We can divide them into the following groups:

• Unconnected 1 meter: 248000
• Unconnected 2 meter: 62000
• Unconnected 5 meter: 170000
• Duplicate (number of duplicate segments): 833000

The following diagram shows the amount of errors per continent:

In the following charts you can see the amount of errors separated by country and the amount of errors in detail per country for “Europe”:

*NEW*: All other non-European countries with more then 5000 errors are listed in the following chart:

The “big three” countries with the highest amount of errors are in the last chart:

As you can see it in the charts, especially the United States need a lot of work. Furthermore it seems that in Ethiopia something went wrong. Was there any data-import or something similar? Frederik does not have a sponsor for running this routing view world-wide on a daily basis right now, so please contact him if you would support us! The last Routing View blog post is online here.

thx @ *Fab*

The last unmapped places analysis for OpenStreetMap that I conducted is nearly eight months ago. So I figured it was about time to create a new one. You can read in the last blog post how my algorithm exactly works.

However, at the moment (Nov. 4th. 2011) we have (according to the Geofabrik extract) about 597 000 entries in OSM for places that are located within “Europe“. This means we have an overall increase of about 90 000 places within the past eight months. We can separate them into several types with different values:

• City: 1093 (as of March 11th, 2011 it was 1055 ; +3.6%)
• Town: 16213 (as of March 11th, 2011 it was 16106 ; +0.7%)
• Suburb: 29642 (as of March 11th, 2011 it was 24913 ; +19.0%)
• Village: 301638 (as of March 11th, 2011 it was 278691 ; +8.2%)
• Hamlet: 238717 (as of March 11th, 2011 it was 184326 ; 29.5%)
• Isolated dwelling: 9064 (new in my stats)

The results showed that of the total 301638 village entries for Europe in the database, about 154445 (51%) (in March 2011 it was 55%) have not been detected or mapped yet. Further it is possible that the places are tagged incorrectly (e.g. villages vs. hamlet). Anyway, the following figures show the distribution of the values for each country (in different scales).

It is nice to see, that Austria (-688), Czech Republic (-633), France (-1978), Georgia (-721), Germany (-1192), Italy (-926), Poland (-2364), Spain (-1472) and the United Kingdom (-829) were able to reduce their “unmapped places” in a quite solid way. As usual you can find my results as a GPX-overlay here: http://resultmaps.neis-one.org

(Remarks for http://resultmaps.neis-one.org: Not each and every country is available as an overlay. Some countries such as France or Poland showed longer browser loading times to display the GPX-overlays!)

UPDATE: Download the complete GPX-files of this analysis here.

thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis

Last weekend I discovered that two guys created a new statistic webpage for the OpenStreetMap project. Both guys did a really nice job! You can find a bunch of information about OSM members, nodes, ways and relations (1) on their webpage. In particular you can find sums of registered or active OSM members or amounts of OSM nodes, ways and relations and their daily activity (2). Further, for most of the information, you can find weekly, monthly and yearly graphs (with tooltips!)(3). The stats are created every night.

Personally, I like the graph of the “daily active members”. Did you know that in the majority of cases more relations have been modified then created? You can see this in the relations “daily created/modified/deleted” graph.

I’m sure you will find some other interesting trends. Notice: It seems that they started this site at the beginning of October 2011, thus most of the information is only available starting at this particular date. Up to now I only knew of the “official” stats webpage here. However, a really big thanks to the “lost” guys (aka Santos & El Loco) … 🙂

The website is online here: http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com

thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis

During my really great vacation in Sweden I had some time to do some further adjustments to the well-known “Your OSM Heatmap“-webpage. For the new readers: “Your OSM Heatmap” shows the contributions of an OpenStreetMap user as a heatmap overlay. You can find my blog post with some more information here.

However, I think it would be a fantastic idea to add a time slider to the webpage. You can find it now below the map! The year of your first and last contribution is on the left and right end of the slider. With the slider you can visualize your OSMtastic-work over time. The following image shows the webpage including the time slider:

As a second feature you can now use, beside your OSM heatmap-link, the permalink of the map to point to an individual position of your heatmap! Finally I have updated the data for the webpage with the latest OSM changesets. Overall the heatmaps for about 150 000 contributors are available. Remember: Not *every* registered OSM member did contribute to the project.

So, who has an awesome OSM HeatMap time-travel? >> http://yosmhm.neis-one.org

thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis