OSM Inspector

The OSM Inspector is a web based debugging tool for advanced OpenStreetMap users offered by Geofabrik. On a map you can see several themed views, each with several layers, showing specific details of the OSM data, often with highlighted errors. Layers can be switched on and off, details about any feature is available on mouseclick and links lead to your favourite editor so that you can fix problems easily.

Contents 1 Views 2 What is Open about OSM Inspector and what isn't 3 Mailing List 4 See also 5 Wishlist

Views

Currently the following views are available:

Area (*)	Name	Description
World	Geometry	shows basic geometry problems such as overlong ways
World	Tagging	shows basic problems with tag keys and values
World	Places	shows places such as cities and towns
World	Highways	shows problems with highway tags
World	Multipolygons	shows problems with multipolygons e.g. missing or inappropriate role, unclosed ways as multipolygon members
World	License Change View	shows a (relatively) current snapshot of Contributor Terms acceptance for all currently visible objects in the OSM database
Europe	Addresses	shows addresses including house numbers, postal code areas etc. mapped according to the Karlsruhe Schema
Europe	Boundaries	shows administrative boundaries (i.e. between countries, districts, etc.)
Europe	Water	shows coastlines, rivers, lakes, and many other features related to water
Europe	Public Transport - Railway Infrastructure	shows the different types of rail infrastructure
Europe	Public Transport - Non-rail Infrastructure	shows the different types of non-rail infrastructure such aerialways, taxi stands or bus guideways
Europe	Public Transport - Ferries	shows ferry lines and terminals
Europe	Public Transport - Stops	shows all kinds of public transport stops including stop position, accesses (such as platforms) and stop areas
Europe	Public Transport - Network	shows public transport network lines
Europe	Routing	shows probable errors related to routing and navigation
Austria	plan.at	shows where work needs to be done following the plan.at data import
Germany	Kreisgrenzen	shows administrative boundaries and a proposed boundary import in Germany (view is in German)
Germany	Straßen NRW	shows roads in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany for import
Netherlands	Netherlands (AND)	shows ways in the Netherlands and whether they have been changed since the AND import

(*) Data for this view is available in this area.

What is Open about OSM Inspector and what isn't

The data sets which OSM Inspector is based on are generated as a side product by custom, Geofabrik-internal data processing. These processing steps are neither documented, nor are the scripts Open Source - but do not hesitate to inquire if you have a specific question about the process.

The results, however, can not only be viewed in OSM inspector, but they can also be downloaded in raw form through WMS and WFS interfaces. (See OSM Inspector/WxS for details.) On request, most layers can also be made available as shape files (you can use WFS download to produce a shape file but that is painfully slow for large areas.)

Mailing List

There is a mailing list for OSM Inspector announcements and discussions at http://lists.geofabrik.de/listinfo/osm-inspector . This is mostly for "power users", you can still use the usual OSM mailing lists for questions and commments regarding OSM Inspector.

See also

Other quality assurance tools are listed in Quality Assurance.

Wishlist

Please use the discussion sections on the different view pages linked above for discussions of these views.

• I would like to see something like the coastline checker for the relation boundary. This relation might be a real key feature in the future for objects locations, replacing advantageously the key "is_in" and the approximations done with the distance to the node place. The map could show unclosed ways tagged with boundary like the coastline checker and could also fill the area with specific colors if a relation exists and all linked ways are correctly tagged and closed. The map could be limited to the boundaries feature and coastlines as backgrounds. Nodes could be displayed if they are linked by the relation (e.g. capital,municipality). Because the admin_level is divided in 10 values which might be not easy to display on one map, I would suggest to split the map in different layers, grouping different levels together. I know it might need hugh disk ressources but high zoom levels are not required (up to 13 ?). Pieren 13:43, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

• Would like to have something that shows highway restrictions e.g.: maxheight, maxspeed, barriers, access etc. --Astrofreak85 22:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

• I would like to be able to highlight where two roads meet (or almost meet), but do not have point in common. This would greatly help getting better routing results. --hupfis 12:25, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
  • This might be an idea for the WayCheck --Spielkind 17:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
• For the Postcode areas, can you add using notes with postal_code key, like postboxes --Tmsd2001 18:43, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

• What about a bicycle-specific view? Allowing the mapper to quickly check the usage of tags like surface=*, tracktype=*, bicycle=*, cycleway=* etc. -- Fröstel 20:27, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

• A problem I sometimes see in OSM is one-way roads where part of the road has accidentally been reversed - making it impossible to route along. It would be very useful to have indication of one-way highways that end somewhere whence you can't leave (for the traffic types allowed for the oneway); similarly, one-way roads where you can't get to the start point. --Tms13 11:53, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

• I would like to get an alert(OSM-message, eMail, Twitter) when a new error rises next to my own location. The alert-range could be part of the OSM-user profile (0=off) -karlos- 18:22, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

• Nodes inside an area that have the same tags as the area (e.g. a parking node inside a parking area) should be warned about. See also this trak ticket.

• House numbers tagged with an associatedStreet relation instead of addr:street are displayed as "Street not found". Could this house number tagging variant also be supported? --Cg909 19:44, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

• The way_with_unusual_char layer contains a biking trail that's tagged mtb:scale=1=* in accordance with the approved MTB schema (see Key:mtb:scale) --ponzu 9:52, 18 February 2011 (PST)

Whats "mtb:scale=1=*" supposed to mean? Can you give a link that shows the problem? If there is a "=" in the key that is an unusual char and it should show up there and the MTB schema doesn't do that. I am not sure what you are saying here. Joto 17:37, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

mtb:scale=1=* means that the tag is mtb:scale=1 and the value is whatever. Here's a link: http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=tagging&lon=-117.63354&lat=33.57350&zoom=14 I understand that = is considered to be an unusual char by OSM Inspector, but I checked the MTB schema on the wiki and I see that they approve tags such as mtb:scale=0, mtb:scale=1, etc. Therefore, I believe that OSM Inspector should not report this as an exception. Thanks for looking into it. ponzu 15:26, 22 February 2011 (PST)

As I read this "mtb:scale" is the key and "1" is the value. It doesn't make much sense to me otherwise. Joto 08:45, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The MTB people came up with this schema, it makes sense to them. I have no opinion one way or the other as I am neither a mountain biker, nor a Wiki/schema editor. However, I do try to maintain my area using OSM Inspector (which, by the way, is fabulous tool), so when it shows legally tagged objects as "unusual", it clutters the map. I am not saying = should be excluded from the list of chars OSMI is suspicious of. In most tags, as you said, it would not make sense. However, if OSMI allows to include logic such as "if tag contains =, but also tag contains mtb:scale, then ignore", that would be good. Thanks for looking into this. ponzu 11:17, 23 February 2011 (PST)

It seems you still don't understand me. The way those tags are used in this case is wrong. OSMI does exactly what it is supposed to do and alert you to this fact. Tags always consist of two parts, the key and the value. On [[Key:mtb:scale] you can see that "mtb:scale" is the tag key and the tag value is "1" or "2" or so. But in this case the tag key is "mtb:scale=1" and the value is "Loose rocks.. and some cactus you should look out for." This is, according to the description in the wiki, the wrong way of using those tags. And OSMI notices this, because "=" does normally not appear in tag keys. Joto 10:25, 26 February 2011 (UTC)