OpenstreetMap: User-Generated street Maps

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OpenstreetMap: User-Generated street Maps
Use r - G e n e r ate d Co nte nt

             OpenStreetMap:
             User-Generated Street Maps

             The OpenStreetMap project is a knowledge collective that provides
             user-generated street maps.

                            T
                                        he process of mapping the Earth       phone masts or other beacons. However, these
                                        accurately was, until recently, the   methods hadn’t gained much market share ow-
                                        preserve of highly skilled, well-     ing to their technical complexity and inability
                                        equipped, and organized individ-      to provide a universal coverage. In contrast,
                                        uals and groups. For many years,      GPS enabled the development of cheap receiv-
                         it was usually the role of surveyors, cartogra-      ers with good positional accuracy, and, by mid-
                         phers, and geographers to map the world and          2001, it was possible to purchase a receiver unit
                         transcribe it on paper or, since the 1960s, into     for roughly US$100. 3 These receivers helped
                         the computer. Lewis and Clark’s expedition to        more people than ever before collect informa-
                         map North America’s West, and Lambton and            tion about different locations and upload it to
                         Everest’s Great Arc expedition to measure India,     their computers. However, until 2002, when an
                         are just two famous episodes in the history of       interchange standard (GPS eXchange format or
                         maps and map making. Each country has an             GPX) was published, manipulating and sharing
                         established national mapping agency charged          this information was a complicated task that
                         with keeping the national maps accurate and          required computing and data manipulation
                         current (for example, the US Geological Survey       knowledge. Fortunately, most GPS receiver
                         and the UK Ordnance Survey).                         developers rapidly adopted the GPX standard,
                            Less than a decade ago, it was common to as-      and, by 2004, it had become commonplace
                         sume that a person needed a university-level de-     (www.topografix.com/gpx.asp).
                                          gree to be able to measure the         The wide availability of high-quality location
                                          Earth and transcribe the in-        information has enabled mass-market mapping
   Mordechai (Muki) Haklay                formation on paper or into the      based on affordable GPS receivers, home com-
   and Patrick Weber                      computer as well as expensive       puters, and the Internet. Although a range of
   University College London              equipment and infrastructure        projects based on user-generated mapping has
                                          to support his or her work.         emerged, OpenStreetMap (OSM) is probably
                                             This, however, has changed       the most extensive and effective project cur-
                                          dramatically over the past de-      rently under development. In this article, we re-
                         cade. On 1 May 2000, US President Bill Clinton       view the project and provide an overview for the
                         announced the removal of selective availability      techniques and methodologies used within it.
                         of the GPS signal1 and, by so doing, provided
                         much improved accuracy for simple, low-cost          OpenStreetMap Background
                         GPS receivers. In practical terms, this made it      Technological changes over the past 10 years,
                         possible to acquire the receiver’s position with     in combination with increased bandwidth and
                         an accuracy of 6 to 10 meters in normal condi-       the ability to provide better tools for collabo-
                         tions, in contrast to roughly 100 meters before      ration, have led to “crowdsourcing”4 —a term
                         the “switch off.” Attempts to develop location-      developed from the concept of outsourcing in
                         based services predated this announcement 2          which business operations are transferred to re-
                         and were based on information from mobile            mote, many times cheaper locations. 5 Similarly,

12 P ER VA SI V E computing                                                    Published by the IEEE CS n   1536-1268/08/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
OpenstreetMap: User-Generated street Maps
500                                                                                          50,000

                                                Track points
                          450                                                                                          45,000
                                                OpenStreetMap (OSM) registered users

                          400                                                                                          40,000

                          350                                                                                          35,000
 Track point (millions)

                          300                                                                                          30,000

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                          250                                                                                          25,000

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                                                                Date

Figure 1. Graph of user and contributions growth to OSM on a monthly basis. The graph shows the accelerating growth in
number of users and the rapid increase in data entry measured in track points (source: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org).

crowdsourcing is how large groups of         and a core group, estimated at approx-       the US Census Bureau’s Tiger (Topolog-
users can perform functions that are ei-     imately 40 volunteers, dedicate their        ically Integrated Geographic Encoding
ther difficult to automate or expensive      time to creating and improving OSM’s         and Referencing)/Line program, the
to implement.                                infrastructure, including maintaining        details provided are limited to streets
   OSM follows the peer production           the server, writing the core software        and roads only; it doesn’t include green
model that created Wikipedia; its aim        that handles the transactions with the       space, landmarks, and the like. In ad-
is to create a set of map data that’s free   server, and creating cartographical          dition, owing to the high cost of map-
to use, editable, and licensed under new     outputs. There’s also a growing com-         ping, the Tiger system’s update cycles
copyright schemes. The project, born         munity of software developers who de-        are infrequent and don’t take into ac-
at University College London (UCL) in        velop software tools to make OSM data        count rapid changes. Commercial geo-
July 2004, was founded by Steve Coast;       available for further use across differ-     graphical information products from
although Coast moved on to start his         ent application domains, software plat-      providers such as NAVTEQ are also
own company, UCL still supports and          forms, and hardware devices.                 expensive and aren’t available for indi-
hosts the main server infrastructure.           A key motivation for this project is to   vidual users in an accessible format.
As of May 2008, OSM had more than            enable free access to current geograph-         The OSM project’s hub is the main
33,000 registered users (with approxi-       ical information where, in European          OSM Web site (www.openstreetmap.
mately 3,500 currently active contrib-       countries, accurate digital geographical     org), which contains four parts. Visitors
utors), and data contribution growth         information is considered to be expen-       are first greeted with a Google Maps-
continues to rise quickly (see Figure 1).    sive and out of the reach of individu-       style online mapping interface, which
A considerable number of contributors        als, small businesses, and community         lets visitors pan, zoom, and search the
edit the world map collaboratively us-       organizations. In the US, where basic        OSM world map and discover which
ing the OSM technical infrastructure,        road information is available through        geographical areas are completed. An

October–december 2008                                                                                   P ER VA SI V E computing 13
User-Generated Content

     export function allows users to down-       weight online Flash-based editor, Pot-        can be extended using several indepen-
     load portions of the OSM information        latch, which lets users add, update, or       dently developed plug-ins. Examples
     in different raster and vector formats      delete geographical features through a        of user-contributed plug-ins include
     for further use or processing. The edit-    relatively easy-to-use interface. The in-     custom Web mapping service (WMS)
     ing tab allows anyone to contribute to      terface is kept deliberately simple, with     background imagery and Yahoo aerial
     the project by digitizing geographical      more advanced functionality provided          imagery, live recording of external GPS
     features, uploading GPX traces from         through keyboard shortcuts; Potlatch          data, and a data and tagging scheme
     hand-held GPS units, or correcting er-      gives extensive guidance to users by          validation tool, to name just a few.
     rors they might have discovered in their    providing predefined tagging schemas             Apart from individual user contribu-
     local areas. The OSM community wiki,        for frequently occurring features (such       tions from GPS tracks and the digitizing
     open for all registered users, contains     as motorways or primary roads).               of aerial imagery, OSM has also taken
     information about the project and of-          Potlatch also lets users upload and        advantage of the availability of free geo-
     fers guidance on best practices to ca-      integrate GPX tracks recorded from            graphical information in certain parts
     sual and advanced mapping contribu-         handheld GPS units. Other important           of the world. For example, over the past
     tors and an extensive documentation of      data sources from which users trace           year, US contributors have imported the
     the project’s technical infrastructure.     road networks and other features is           public-domain Tiger information, add-
       Noticeably, OSM decided to follow         satellite imagery and out-of-copyright        ing to OSM’s comprehensive street and
     the route of allowing only registered       maps, which are integrated into the           highway coverage for the entire US.
     users to edit the map, not following        mapping interface. Notably, at the end        In July 2007, commercial navigation
     Wikipedia’s open-for-all approach.          of 2006, Yahoo granted OSM the right          information provider AND (Automo-
     OSM project leads wanted the ability        to use its satellite imagery Web service      tive Navigation Data) donated the en-
     to trace the information source in case     to trace roads and other features. For        tire street map of the Netherlands to
     of copyright disputes and ensure the in-    example, Yahoo hosts detailed aerial          the project, thus completing street-level
     formation was maintained.                   imagery of Baghdad, Iraq, which let           mapping of the first country in OSM.
       In the following sections, we describe    OSM contributors remotely map the             Local and national authorities have
     the OSM GeoStack — the set of tools         city in great detail, resulting in the most   contributed information to the project
     that lets users capture, produce, com-      detailed online map of Baghdad to date.       as well—for example, the Isle of Man’s
     municate, aggregate, and consume the        However, this map is based solely on          Department for Local Government and
     geographical information produced in        amateur image interpretation, and, de-        the Environment donated geographical
     the project (see other work6 for further    spite the original effort, very little fur-   information to OSM, enabling the cre-
                                                                                               ation of an excellent map of the island.

           OpenStreetMap’s aim is to create a set of map                                       Technical Infrastructure
                                                                                               The next element of the GeoStack fo-
            data that’s free to use, editable, and licensed                                    cuses on the way in which geographi-
                                                                                               cal information is stored and orga-
                      under new copyright schemes.                                             nized. Here, at the core of OSM data
                                                                                               management, it’s easy to see how open
     discussion of the GeoStack). As already     ther information (such as street names)       source philosophy permeates the proj-
     noted, the Web site provides a mecha-       has been added to the map.                    ect’s technical infrastructure. OSM is
     nism to consume OSM data — but in             More experienced OSM contributors           built iteratively using the principle that
     the next section we move to the starting    also use the Java OpenStreetMap Editor        the simplest approach to any problem
     point of the stack, where data is cap-      (JOSM), an editing suite with an inter-       is the best way to ensure the success of
     tured and produced.                         face more akin to traditional geographi-      the project as a whole. OSM’s develop-
                                                 cal information systems (GIS) packages.       ers deliberately steered away from us-
     Editing Tools                               The application lets users import, edit,      ing existing standards for geographical
     User-contributed geographical informa-      and tag OSM data offline and allows           information from standard bodies such
     tion is obviously a core part of OSM,       bulk uploads of OSM updates through           as the Open Geospatial Consortium
     and the OSM developer community has         the OSM application programming in-           (OGC)—for example, its WMS stan-
     made a considerable effort to implement     terface (API). JOSM offers advanced           dard. They felt that most such tools and
     tools to facilitate user contributions to   functionalities such as linking OSM           standards are hard to use and maintain,
     the database. For most casual contribu-     features to photos and audio notes,           citing performance issues with, for in-
     tors, the OSM Web site offers a light-      supports data conflict resolutions, and       stance, MapServer (a popular open

14   P ER VA SI V E computing                                                                                 www.computer.org/pervasive
Figure 2. Main OpenStreetMap Web
site Slippy Map with detailed coverage
of central London. Notice the ability
to edit, export, and upload data
by using the top tabs (source: www.
openstreetmap.org).

source WMS) and a lack of adaptability
of OGC-compliant software packages
to support wiki-style behavior.
   At the heart of OSM’s technical infra-
structure lies the central database hold-
ing the live data, which is implemented
in MySQL. The database schema is de-
signed to support wiki behaviors, such as
versioning and rollbacks, and keeps cop-
ies of modified or deleted features indefi-
nitely. All geographical entities are re-
corded as points (nodes), which contain
the latitude and longitude coordinates
along with user name and timestamp
information. Linear and area features
are defined by reference to a list of or-
dered nodes, called ways. Area features
aren’t explicitly defined in the database
schema—rather, they’re defined im-            is voluntary. Guidance on best prac-         butes OSM contributors have collected,
plicitly by the condition of a way that’s     tices for tagging is given at the editing    the main cartographic output from the
closed (the first node of a way is the same   software level for casual contributors.      OSM information is presented on the
as the last one) and explicit tagging con-    The lack of restrictions also benefits us-   OSM Web site as a Google Maps-like
ventions (using the tag area=yes).            ers because they can freely implement        interface, coined “Slippy Map,” which
   Along with the geographical coor-          custom tagging schemas for specific          uses the open source AJAX library
dinates of features in the OSM data-          applications.                                OpenLayers to dynamically update the
base, attributes of features are recorded        Access to the core OSM database is        map display and allow interaction with
for each node and way as semicolon-           provided by a dedicated RESTful API,         users. As users drag the map, the vis-
separated key=value pairs (for exam-          which is implemented in Ruby on Rails        ible extent is updated and new map tiles
ple, type=pub;name=The Bull). This tagging    and supports authentication, enabling        are requested in the background with-
schema, which is increasingly being           users to add, update, and delete geo-        out reloading the entire HTML page.
developed into a complex taxonomy of          graphical features. The API accepts          A search function (implemented as an
real-world feature classes and objects,       and outputs data in OSM XML, a dedi-         external Web service) lets users quickly
is a core part of the OSM initiative and      cated data transport format developed        find cities, villages, or other points of in-
is community-driven. Any member of            for the project that replicates the data-    terest (POIs) in the database. Recently,
the community can contribute to and           bases’ specific entity model. All editing    OSM developers added an export tab,
update the schema by proposing new            tools use this API for accessing and up-     which lets users quickly generate map
key=value pairs. Discussion on the OSM        dating the main database. As a result,       images, PDF files, and raw data down-
wiki leads the community to vote on           editing and presentation tools can be        loads of custom bounding boxes.
tag propositions and reach a consensus        developed independently from the data-          The default set of tiles on the main
on the definition of and best practices       base, with the lightweight communica-        OSM Web site (see Figure 2) is rendered
for feature tagging. Interestingly, and       tion protocol acting as a glue between       using Mapnik, an open source library
sometimes controversially, the OSM            the elements of OSM’s GeoStack.              for generating high-quality map images.
database doesn’t pose any limitations                                                      It uses a weekly database dump as the
on the tags users can attach to features,     Mapping Outputs                              source for the rendering of map tiles,
and thus adhering to the core tagging         Given the database, which contains all       given that live rendering of tiles on client
schema the community agreed upon              the geographical information and attri-      request would be too computationally

October–december 2008                                                                                     P ER VA SI V E computing 15
User-Generated Content

     expensive to be practical; map tiles are     or Gosmore to generate maps quickly.         Europe spent two days driving, cycling,
     therefore rendered for all zoom levels       Other members of the OSM community           and wandering around the island with
     and saved on the server so that they can     are also developing import and conver-       GPS receivers to collect a complete cov-
     be served rapidly as static images.          sion tools to support OSM data in GIS        erage of roads and footpaths. After col-
        Owing to the open source nature of        packages such as Manifold GIS (www.          lecting the individual contributions,
     all the tools needed for map render-         manifold.net) and ArcGIS (www.esri.          processing them, and uploading the
     ing, several OSM contributors have           com/software/arcgis/). Significantly,        data, a practically complete map of the
     developed custom map tile sets that          vendors of commercial GIS packages,          island emerged.
     cater to specific needs and target au-       such as CadCorp SIS and Global Map-             Although these community events
     diences. One example is a tile set that      per, have recently included OSM XML          positively contribute to the overall proj-
     highlights cycle-path networks and           data support out of the box.                 ect by generating new data and street
     other features relevant to cyclists.            Users have converted OSM informa-         labeling, they aren’t only meant as data
        Because of the high demands on com-       tion for use on a multitude of devices,      collection exercises. Mapping parties
     puting during rendering, a community         including mobile phones, PDAs, and           play an essential part in creating and fos-
     grid element of OSM has developed.           GPS units. A community-maintained            tering local OSM user groups and creat-
     Tiles@Home (T@H) is a distributed            software package lets users trans-           ing a vibrant social community around
     map-tile-rendering system that com-          late OSM data into the Garmin IMG            the project (see Figure 3). User groups
     prises a central coordinating server and     GPS map format, despite this for-            have now formed all over the UK, as
     approximately 100 active software cli-       mat’s proprietary nature and lack of         well as in continental Europe and the
     ents (as of May 2008), which members of      documentation.                               rest of the world. A detailed discussion
     the OSM community contributed. The                                                        of a mapping party appears elsewhere.7
     main server distributes rendering jobs       Social Collaboration
     between clients, which collect the rele-     Unlike Wikipedia, on which individu-         Motivations and Challenges
     vant data from the OSM API and render        als create the majority of content at dis-   OSM’s success should be attributed to
     a set of map tiles that are then uploaded    parate locations, the OSM community          its founder’s vision of the project as a
     back to the server for distribution. The     organizes a series of local workshops        combined social and technical chal-
     main benefit of T@H is that it distributes   (called “mapping parties”), which aim        lenge. In many interviews and presen-
     the computational load between multi-        to create and annotate content for local-    tations, Coast emphasizes the social
     tudes of clients, enabling the system to     ized geographical areas. These events        side’s importance: “A big aspect of
     quickly render large numbers of up-to-       are designed to introduce new users and      getting OSM off the ground was the
     date map tiles. T@H is especially use-       contributors to the community with the       mapping parties: getting drunk and
     ful for OSM mapping contributors that        hands-on experience of collecting, pro-      arguing with people.”8 Nick Black,
     want to quickly see the results of data      cessing, and uploading data to the OSM       another OSM core contributor, noted
     changes, as they can request specific ar-    project. The meetings might take the         that people have a range of reasons for
                                                                                               getting involved in the project—from
                                                                                               certain ideological views such as a be-
                 OpenStreetMap is built iteratively using                                      lief in the provision of free information
                                                                                               to improve the world, to anti-national
               the principle that the simplest approach                                        mapping agency views, to those who
                                                                                               enjoy going out and mapping or sitting
               to any problem is the best way to ensure                                        at home and writing computer code,
                                                                                               to those who enjoy feeling like part of
                  the success of the project as a whole.                                       a community.9 Coast also adds that
                                                                                               there’s an “addictive” aspect of getting
     eas to be added to the T@H rendering         shape of informal and small gatherings       involved in the project, which adds to
     queue. Typically, such requests for up-      for a few hours to complete missing fea-     the participants’ commitment.
     dated map tiles are fulfilled in a matter    tures of a small defined neighborhood,          Indeed, OSM can boast significant
     of hours, in contrast to up to seven days    up to more ambitious efforts that take       achievement and is currently going
     for a Mapnik tile set update.                several days and involve several dozens      through a period of rapid growth in
       Users interested in only a small area      of participants. One of the first mapping    terms of the number of users who con-
     and who don’t need a Web-mapping             parties took place on the Isle of Wight,     tribute to the map, its visibility as the
     server set-up can use local software         off the south coast of England, in May       leading Open Geodata project, and of
     rendering packages such as Kosmos            2006. More than 30 participants from         the number of map edits. Its infrastruc-

16   P ER VA SI V E computing                                                                                 www.computer.org/pervasive
Figure 3. A mapping party. In February
2008, Schuyler Erle and Mikel Maron,
contributors to OSM, held a series of
multiday mapping parties in several
universities to create local contributor
groups (source: www.flickr.com/photos/
tags/freemapindia2008/).

ture is demonstrating how a modern,
open source, and light structure can
provide a reliable and scalable GIS; the
innovation that OSM offers can also
teach many established GIS providers
valuable lessons. The mainstream GIS
literature has already noted and dis-
cussed OSM and similar activities.10
   Along with these achievements, some
open issues still must be taken into ac-    mation, such as traffic directions and      which the complexities of adding or
count, such as the fitness for purpose of   restrictions or street names, can be cru-   updating data to OSM due to the us-
OSM data, the influence of geography        cial. Although data capture based on        ability of the data entry application and
and participation on the project, the       aerial imagery sped up road mapping,        the need to understand the ontological
ability to continue to update the infor-    the road name can’t be captured with-       schema need to be added. In short, this
mation, and licensing.                      out a survey at the ground level unless     is a challenging aspect that the OSM
   Since early 2007, with the completion    the surveyor breaks copyright laws and      community must solve.
of the mapping of Cambridge, OSM in-        uses an existing map to copy the name.         Finally, the issue of licensing has be-
formation and the cartographic ability      Furthermore, mistakes from misinter-        deviled OSM from the start. The proj-
of Mapnik demonstrated the useful-          preting aerial imagery also must be         ect started with the Creative Commons
ness of the information for several car-    rectified through ground survey. Here,      framework (CC-By-SA), which has
tographic products and presentation         there’s no escape from the world’s          proved to be unsuitable for geographical
of paper maps. However, this cover-         physical geography, and OSM is de-          information. For example, the “share
age isn’t universal. Although, as Coast     pendent on willing contributors on the      alike” principle means that by mixing
notes, “it’s important to let go of the     ground in the area under survey. The        OSM information with other sources
concept of completeness,”8 some idea        same is true for updates and changes        of information, the resulting map must
about information quality is crucial        to the data—for example, when a road        be shared under the same terms. How-
for evaluating how fit OSM data is for      changes from two-way to one-way ow-         ever, OSM creates the base map, which
various applications. Considerations        ing to local traffic regulations.           in most geographical analysis projects
that should be included are how well           Although the common argument             is the starting point. The map is aug-
an area is covered by data, the data’s      from OSM advocates is that because of       mented either through cartographic
accuracy in terms of positional accu-       the data’s free nature, people who spot a   processing to produce products such as
racy and attributes, the consistency        mistake are likely to be more motivated     tourist maps or combined with other
in terms of classification or data-cap-     to rectify it, in practice, OSM is exhib-   sources of information, such as the cen-
ture procedures, and quality control.       iting the same participation inequality     sus, to create thematic maps. It can also
Currently, OSM doesn’t provide any          as many other user-generated content        be combined with sensitive commercial
of these measures and doesn’t have in-      projects.11 A few users are responsible     information for analyzing store loca-
ternal quality assurance procedures.        for contributing a significant amount       tions, among other things. In all these
Preliminary results from an evaluation      of the information—this phenomena           cases, the CC-By-SA prevents the use
of completeness at UCL suggest that         is also visible in terms of places, where   of the data or might complicate matters
OSM has covered about 29 percent            many areas are mapped by a single           significantly. The OSM community has
of roads in England. Even in London,        user. It’s reasonable to assume that,       been discussing a new license for more
where the project started, large areas      as on Wikipedia, the number of users        than two years and hopes to publish
are undermapped.                            who don’t contribute any improvement        one soon, although it’s clear that some
   In many applications, attribute infor-   to the map can reach 99.8 percent, to       use issues will remain unresolved.

October–december 2008                                                                                 P ER VA SI V E computing 17
User-Generated Content

                                                                                 the Authors               provided early support for the engagement of
                                                                                                           OpenStreetMap in 2006.
                        Mordechai (Muki) Haklay is a senior lecturer in geographical information
                        science in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineer-
                        ing at University College London. His research interests are in public access to
                        environmental information, human-computer interaction, usability engineer-         References
                        ing for GIS, and the societal aspects of GIS use. Haklay has a PhD in geogra-
                        phy from UCL. He’s a member of the ACM, a fellow of the Royal Geographic            1. B. Clinton, Improving the Civilian Global
                        Society, and a member of the Association for Geographical Information (AGI).           Positioning System (GPS), Office of Sci-
                        Contact him at m.haklay@ucl.ac.uk.                                                     ence and Technology Policy, Executive
                                                                                                               Office of the President, 1 May 2000;
                                                                                                               ht tp: //clinton4.nara.gov/ W H / EOP/
                        Patrick Weber is a third-year engineering doctorate student in University
                                                                                                               OSTP/html/0053_4.html.
                        College London’s Department of Computer Science. His research interests lie
                        in the application of GI science and spatial decision support systems to gain
                                                                                                            2. A. Giordano, M. Chan, and H. Habal, “A
                        a better understanding of foreign direct investment in London as well as the
                                                                                                               Novel Location-Based Service and Archi-
                        wider accessibility and public awareness issues for geographical information
                                                                                                               tecture,” 6th IEEE Int’l Symp. Personal,
                        science. Weber has an MSc in GIS from UCL and an MS in physical geography
                                                                                                               Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communica-
                        from the Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg. Contact him at p.weber@ucl.
                                                                                                               tions, Wireless: Merging onto the Infor-
                        ac.uk.
                                                                                                               mation Superhighway (PIMRC 95), IEEE
                                                                                                               Press, 1995, pp. 853–857.

     O
                                                                                                            3. J. Hightower and G.A. Borriello, Sur-
                   SM provides a good ex-            tant aspects in terms of geographical                     vey and Taxonomy of Location-Sensing
                                                                                                               Systems for Ubiquitous Computing, UW
                   ample of the social and           information delivery. The data format                     CSE 01-08-03, Dept. of Computer Science
                   technical aspects of user-        and structures demonstrate a simple                       and Eng., Univ. of Washington, 2001.
                   generated content com-            approach for developing and delivering
                                                                                                            4. J. Howe, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,”
     munities. Using terminology found               geographical information, in contrast                     Wired, June 2006; www.wired.com/
     in other work,12 OSM is a knowledge             to current practice within the GIS in-                    wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html.
     collective that creates Open Geodata            dustry. On the other hand, OSM data
                                                                                                            5. T.L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief
     as its main objective. Simultaneously,          isn’t complete or consistent across the                   History of the Twenty-First Century,
     it includes a peer production network,          world, or even across London, where                       Updated And Expanded Edition, Farrar,
     as different groups within the organi-          the project started. The data’s accu-                     Straus, and Giroux, 2006.
     zation are developing different aspects         racy is unknown, given that there are                  6. A.J. Turner, Introduction to Neogeogra-
     of the project—digitizing tools, map-           no systemic and comprehensive qual-                       phy, O’Reilly Media, 2006.
     rendering software, server software,            ity assurance processes integral to the
                                                                                                            7. C. Perkins and M. Dodge, “The Potential
     and running activities such as mapping          data collection. Furthermore, there’s                     of User-Generated Cartography: A Case
     parties. It’s utilizing community com-          no intention of universal coverage; as                    Study of the OpenStreetMap Project and
     puting grids in the process of render-          Coast remarks: “Nobody wants to do                        Mapchester Mapping Party,” North West
                                                                                                               Geography, vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 19–32.
     ing map tiles through T@H. OSM uses             council estates. But apart from those
     social mobile computing, especially             socioeconomic barriers—for places                      8. GISPro, “The GISPro Interview with
     during mapping parties when partici-            people aren’t that interested in visiting                 OSM Founder Steve Coast,” GIS Profes-
                                                                                                               sional, no. 18, Oct. 2007, pp. 20–23.
     pants coordinate their work via mobile          anyway—nowhere else gets missed.”9
     GPS receivers and mobile phones. The               Although the OSM project started                    9. N. Black, “OpenStreetMap — Geo-
     group-forming network appears on the            in 2004, it’s still in its early stages—the               data Collection for the 21st Century,”
                                                                                                               presented at the AGI annual confer-
     main wiki, which contains information           area of user-generated geographical in-                   ence, 2007; www.slideshare.net/nickb/
     about the project, and also through an          formation will surely grow in the future                  nick-black- openstreetmap -geodata-
     array of active mailing lists, Web fo-          with applications in the private, public,                 collection-for-the-21st-century.
     rums, Internet Relay Chats (IRCs), and          and voluntary sectors. It has already                 10. M.F. Goodchild, “Citizens as Voluntary
     other modes of computer-mediated                shaken the world of geographical infor-                   Sensors: Spatial Data Infrastructure in the
     communication (CMC). Finally, social            mation, and the wider industry is paying                  World of Web 2.0,” Int’l J. Spatial Data
                                                                                                               Infrastructures Research, vol. 2, 2007,
     accounting is evident in OSM—for ex-            attention to the emerging business mod-                   pp. 24–32.
     ample, in the contributions of various          els that OSM volunteers have created.
     members of the OSM community high-                                                                    11. J. Nielsen, “Participation Inequality:
                                                                                                               Encouraging More Users to Contribute,”
     lighted on a Web site about the amount          Acknowledgments                                           Alertbox, 9 Oct. 2006; www.useit.com/
     of computing they’ve contributed or                                                                       alertbox/participation_inequality.html.
     how many edits they’ve performed dur-           We thank the anonymous reviewers who pro-
                                                     vided useful suggestions on an earlier version        12. A. Saveri, H. Rheingold, and K. Vian,
     ing the last week, month, and year.             of this article. Thanks to the Royal Geographical         Technologies of Cooperation, Inst. for
        OSM also demonstrates some impor-            Society’s Small Research Grants program, which            the Future, 2005.

18   P ER VA SI V E computing                                                                                               www.computer.org/pervasive
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