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State of the Map is alive and well
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Mikel Maron talking about social functions in OSM. Photo by Puneet Kishor, released under CC0 PD Dedication
About 400 map makers, coders, cartographers, designers, business services providers and data mungers of chiefly spatial persuasion gathered in San Francisco to “talk OpenStreetMap, learn from each other, and move the project forward.” These conference attendees are a tip of an iceberg composed of 1.1 million registered users who have collectively gathered 3.2 billion GPS points around the world since OpenStreetMap was launched in 2004 as a free, editable map of the whole world. Unlike proprietary datasets, OpenStreetMap allows free access to the full map dataset. About 28 GB of data representing the entire planet can be downloaded in full, but also is available in immediately-useful forms like maps and commercial services. OpenStreetMap is open data licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) with the cartography in its tiles and its documentation licensed under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
SOTMUS Program. Photo by Puneet Kishor, released under CC0 PD Dedication
The program ranged from building and nurturing OSM communities, to technical wizardry, to improving infrastructure. Martijn van Exel provided an insight into the OSM community in the United States (see table below). Big countries and large areas pose challenges already in the queue to be tackled.
| population | 310 million |
|---|---|
| land area | 3.7 million sq miles |
| mappers | 27,000 |
| casual (< 100 edits) | 71.0% |
| active (>100 edits, active in last 3M) | 6.8% |
| power (>1000 edits, active in last 3M, active for >1Y | 2.6% |
| total edits, all time | 723,000,000 |
| edits by top 10 mappers (incl bots and import accounts) | 69.8% |
| edits by power mappers (excl most bots and import accounts) | 57.3% |
As a spatial data munger and environmental scientist, I am proud to be a part of this community. As a believer in the power of open, collaborative science and geospatial, I am inspired by it.