Almost two years ago I published a web service that finds suspicious OpenStreetMap (OSM) map changes. You can use the service here and find some more information in previous blog posts. Especially Changeset discussions revealed that they are more or less de facto standard for communication between contributors during map change reviews.

However, when I am inspecting map changes, I sometimes see new contributors using uncommon OSM tags. Therefore I think it could be useful to add an additional assessment parameter to the aforementioned suspicious OSM map changes page. The newly introduced indicator states the matching ratio between the contributed and the most popular OSM tags. This means, if the changeset contributor used many uncommon tags at her/his map changes objects, the matching rate will be low. If the contributor applied many common (“popular”) tags, it results in a high matching rate towards 100%. For the calculation I used Jochen Topf’s taginfo API to get commonly used OSM tags. An API description can be found here. Furthermore I added the average age (in days) of modified and deleted objects. This indicator can be used to see if the contributor edited objects, which have been mapped today (0 days) or exist already for a longer period of time, e.g. 1566 days. The values for the average version numbers are computed in a similar fashion.

The OSM project still records around 650 new contributors each day (out of almost 5,000 registered members per day). Some countries (such as Belgium or Spain) already provide platforms to coordinate the introduction to OSM for new mappers. Others use special scripts or intense manual work to send the newly registered contributors mails with useful information (Washington or The Netherland). However, oftentimes new contributors make, as expected, beginner-mistakes. Personally, I often detect unconnected ways, wrong tags or rare fictive data. Unfortunately, sometimes (new) members also delete, intentionally or unintentionally, existing map data.

At the end of 2014, many people were anticipating the newly introduced changeset discussions feature. A few months later, I developed a page that finds the latest discussions around the world or in your country. By now, many OSM members use changeset discussions for commenting or questioning map edits of other members.

Back in 2010 & 2011 I conducted several studies to detect underrepresented regions a.k.a. “unmapped” places in OpenStreetMap (OSM). More than five years later, some people asked if I could rerun the analysis. Based on the latest OSM planet dump file and Taginfo, almost 1 million places have been tagged as villages. Furthermore, around 59 million streets have a residential, unclassified or service highway value. My algorithm to find unmapped places, works as follows:

1. Use every place node of the OSM dataset which has a village-tag (place=village).
2. Search in a radius of ca. 700 m for a street with one of the following highway-values: residential, unclassified or service.
3. If no street can be found, mark the place as “unmapped”!

My results for the entire OSM planet can be found under the following webpage.

The reputation of a contributor in OpenStreetMap (OSM) plays a significant role, especially when considering the quality assessment of the collected data. Sometimes it’s difficult to make a meaningful statement about a contributor by simply looking at the raw mapping work represented by the number of created objects or used tags. Therefore, it would be really helpful if we would have some additional information about the person who contributes to the project. For example: Does she/he help other contributors? Is her/his work somehow documented or based on one of the “discussed” proposals? Or does she/he work as a lone warrior in the OSM world?

In 2010 I created “How did you contribute to OpenStreetMap?” (HDYC) as a kind of fun side project. Nowadays many people use it to get some detailed information about OSM contributors. Some of you are probably familiar with the “verified” icon used on some celebrity Twitter accounts. I created a similar new feature for the aforementioned HDYC page. If you connect your related OSM accounts, your profile will be marked as “verified”.

Since its rise in popularity, the well-known online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been struggling with manipulation or, in the worst-case, vandalism attempts. Similarly, the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project suffered several times over the past few years of cases where incorrect map data edits were made. These erroneous edits can stem at times from (new) contributors or illegal data imports (or automated edits) which have not been discussed in advance with the community or the Data Working Group (DWG) and corrupted existing project data. The current OSM wiki page gives a great overview about general guidelines and e.g. types of vandalism. Another page in the wiki also mentions a prototype of a rule based system for the automatic detection of vandalism in OSM, which I developed in 2012. However, the system has never actually been implemented. Today, the contributors of OSM can use a variety of different tools to inspect an area or particular map changes. A few of them are listed below (complete list can be found here):

The Missing Maps project is a collaboration between the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and various partner agencies, such as the American or the British Red Cross. One of their main objectives is “to map the most vulnerable places in the developing world, in order that international and local NGOs and individuals can use the maps and data to better respond to crises affecting the areas.” You can find additional information about the Missing Maps Project on the OpenStreetMap (OSM) wiki and their project page.

A year ago, I created a webpage where you can filter OSM changesets by a specific comment. Sadly the webpage provides only a search for the latest seven days. However, the Missing Maps project asked me, if it’s possible to “look over a longer time scale”? Here we go, based on a similar concept that I used for a webpage that I created for the HOT Ebola Response, I made a Map that displays all OSM changesets which have the hashtag #MissingMaps in the comment attribute and have been created since August 1st, 2014. It’s online here and being updated on an hourly basis: http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-missingmaps

For almost eight months the OpenStreetMap (OSM) community has been collecting geo information for the West Africa Ebola outbreak response now. The collective work of the crowd is somewhat managed by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). For example, the Task Manager provided by HOT gives interested contributors information in which areas map features are needed. However, you can find additional information in an article by Pierre Beland, which he wrote during a conference where he presented the efforts of the OSM community. The OSM wiki contains some useful information about the West Africa Ebola Response too. Matt Irwin also wrote a summary about the OSM mapper contributions and created an interesting visualization of all the mapping work.

Gregory Marler had the great idea to implement an “explored” map, based on a concept that some of you might know as “fog of war” from strategy video games. So here you go: I extended my OSM Heat Map with the “Explored Map Style”. It essentially reveals the contribution areas of an OpenStreetMap member in a “fog of war” style. The following figure shows Gregory’s amazing “explored” OSM map.

The Heat & Explored Maps are available for almost all OSM members who contributed at least several changesets here: http://yosmhm.neis-one.org (The new “Explored Map Style” can be selected in the layer panel (upper right corner). Additionally, I added the awesome looking and well known Watercolor and Toner map styles from Stamen design)

Thanks to maɪˈæmɪ Dennis

Maybe some of you are already familiar with “OSMstats”, a website that provides numerous statistics about the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project. The site was created and is maintained by the two guys at altogetherlost.com. However, OSMstats has now been moved to the ResultMaps domain at osmstats.neis-one.org. I added several new features too. First of all, you can now select a specific date for your stats. Secondly, the main menu panel has been extended with a new entry for statistical information about OSM changesets.

Additionally, the graphs for the country statistics, the active members and daily edits are also available in a “year”-overview. I hope you like the new extensions. A big thanks to both guys at altogetherlost.com who originally created OSMstats!

OSMstats is now available at: http://osmstats.neis-one.org
Feel free to check out my Resultmaps too which offer many helpful and funny OSM tools: http://resultmaps.neis-one.org

In my last blog post I showed that OpenStreetMap (OSM) changesets offer a great opportunity to visualize the latest changes to the OSM map or to compute some up to date descriptive statistics of a particular region (Typhoon Haiyan OSM Response Map). Oftentimes OSM contributors use tags, comments or hashtags in their changesets to provide additional information about the features they mapped. For example it is quite common to add a specific hashtag, such as #notlm (Night of the living maps), to the changeset comment to link to a mapping party or another event. To filter or collect changesets with these notations, I developed a new webpage: http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-changesets