Analyzing the Contributor Activity of a Volunteered Geographic Information Project — The Case of OpenStreetMap

TLDR

OpenStreetMap, founded in 2004, has attracted over half a million registered members by 2011, yet the extent of individual contributions remains unclear. This study investigates the patterns of contributor activity within the OpenStreetMap community. The authors performed multiple analyses of contributor behavior and generated predictions to guide future research. Only 38 % of members made at least one edit and just 5 % were highly productive, with 72 % of contributors based in Europe and activity areas ranging from a soccer field to over 50 km².

Abstract

The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project, founded in 2004, has gathered an exceptional amount of interest in recent years and counts as one of the most impressive sources of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) on the Internet. In total, more than half a million members had registered for the project by the end of 2011. However, while this number of contributors seems impressive, questions remain about the individual contributions that have been made by the project members. This research article contains several studies regarding the contributions by the community of the project. The results show that only 38% (192,000) of the registered members carried out at least one edit in the OSM database and that only 5% (24,000) of all members actively contributed to the project in a more productive way. The majority of the members are located in Europe (72%) and each member has an activity area whose size may range from one soccer field up to more than 50 km2. In addition to several more analyses conducted for this article, predictions will be made about how this newly acquired knowledge can be used for future research.