The challenging task of creating an accurate and up-to-date map of the fast changing world can be easily solved by means of crowdsourcing. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a good example of this approach. However, the quantification of quality and suitability of OSM for certain applications is necessary as this database is primarily constructed by amateurs. Researchers have proposed several parameters to...

OpenStreetMap has grown rapidly into an exemplary geowiki, where contributors collectively build an open map of the world. Official ‘mapping party’ events are organized on a regular basis to invite users to socialize, map and to engage new-comers locally. Here, we measure the direct and indirect impact of mapping parties on user contributions in both the short and long terms. We question whethe...

We present a prior-knowledge based shadow prediction model, focused on outdoors scene, which allows to predict pixels, on the camera, which are likely to be part of shadows casted by surrounded buildings. We employ a geometrical approach which models surrounding buildings, their shadow and the camera. One innovative aspect of our method is to retrieve building datas automatically from OpenStree...

The completeness of buildings in OpenStreetMap (OSM) is estimated for a medium-sized German city and its surroundings by comparing the OSM data with data from an official building cadastre. As completeness measures we apply two unit-based methods that are frequently applied in similar studies. It is found that the estimation of OSM building completeness strongly differ between the methods. A co...

This paper assesses the completeness of bicycle trail and on-street lane features in OpenStreetMap (OSM). Comparing OSM cycling features with reference data from local planning agencies for selected US Urbanized Areas shows that OSM bicycle trails tend to be more completely mapped than bicycle lanes. Manual evaluation of mapped cycling features in OSM and Google Maps for selected test areas wit...

Against the paucity of urban parcels in China, this paper proposes a method to automatically identify and characterize parcels (AICP) with OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Points of Interest (POI) data. Parcels are the basic spatial units for fine-scale urban modeling, urban studies, as well as spatial planning. Conventional ways of identification and characterization of parcels rely on remote sensing a...