Abstract
OpenStreetMap (OSM) has been successfully applied all around the world, especially in developed western countries, but this is the first study of the quality of OSM data in China. Two data quality elements, completeness and positional accuracy, were chosen to conduct the assessment via a comparison against Baidu datasets. This chapter quantitatively depicts some characteristics of the distribution of OSM data based on the density of line and point features. The analysis showed that 71 % of the OSM data was less detailed than the Baidu datasets, but on average 66 % of OSM data was accurate. The OSM data for Beijing and Shanghai is most complete with high positional accuracy. Overall coverage was extremely poor, as more than 94 % of the country consisted of ‘incomplete regions’ (regions with few or no data). However, OSM data has grown quickly, according to a comparison of three years, 2011 to 2013. More interestingly, OSM contained more detailed information in some poor areas, which could be an improvement over datasets provided for normal users by commercial or governmental agencies.
This work has been supported in part by NSFC of China (Project No. 41361084)
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Acknowledgments
We thank OSM for the data used in this work. Some pictures, such as Fig. 14.1 and Table 14.2, are OpenStreetMap copyright. We would like to express our appreciation to previous researchers, whose work inspired us. Moreover, we are very grateful to Yang Zhang and other colleagues in our laboratory for their valuable comments.
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Zheng, S., Zheng, J. (2014). Assessing the Completeness and Positional Accuracy of OpenStreetMap in China. In: Bandrova, T., Konecny, M., Zlatanova, S. (eds) Thematic Cartography for the Society. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08180-9_14
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