Free & Open Map of the World ?

"Wikipedia of Maps"

"Wikipedia of Maps"

Aggregate product of 
BILLIONS
of edits across 
MILLIONS
of objects by 
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS
of contributors for over a decade

The map is not a single, static rendering of geospatial data, but rather a dynamic and growing community of contributors that maintains an open map of the world.

Contributor-Centric OpenStreetMap Research

Uncover the history and evolution of the map (and community) through enhanced, historical datasets

Improve reproducibility of results and transparency with definitions of specific measurable attributes and indicators

Why is this a hard problem?

Humanitarian & Disaster Mapping

(What got me interested in OpenStreetMap)

Haiti Earthquake 2010

Active users 2009 vs. 2010

Building Density 2009 vs. 2010

Typhoon Yolanda 2013 (Philippines)

Nepal Earthquake 2015

Billions of Geographic Points

(& billions of metadata values)

highway = *

Map Data © OpenStreetMap Contributors

Map Data © OpenStreetMap Contributors

Map Data © OpenStreetMap Contributors

townsendjennings.com/osm-highway-tags

Map Data © OpenStreetMap Contributors

building = *

© OpenStreetMap Contributors

© OpenStreetMap Contributors

© OpenStreetMap Contributors

© OpenStreetMap Contributors

© OpenStreetMap Contributors

More than 10 editors active in 2015

Count of Distinct User IDs in the planet history (June 2017):

With less than 10 edits:

Less than 100 edits:

(Note, a square building = 5 edits: 1 way and 4 nodes)

Not all contributions are equal

(clearly)

OSM Quality Implications + Disaster Mapping

15 Contributors / Square Kilometer

Buildings & Roads?

What about compared to high quality regions?

Users By Country

Using the latest osm-qa-tile planet file, we can calculate per-Country statistics for the planet in not a lot of time!

Users By Country

Where are the Contributions?

Mapbox Data Team

Questions?