Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance tools, help lead to better quality of OSM Data. Often the tools achieve this by providing a list of bugs in the data, which mappers can then go and fix using editing tools. The bugs are either automatically detected based on rules and data analysis, or the tools provide a means of manually reporting, or some combination of the two. There are many different ideas for how to do this, and what kind of bugs to focus on, hence many different tools.
Openstreetmap is often more up-to-date and of a higher quality than other commercial maps when dealing with New and Changed Ways.
Bug Reporting Tools
These are tools that try to highlight and point out parts of the data that are likely wrong. They are a reports from manually quality checks, flagging up potential bug reports from humans. In both cases, the reported issues may contain false positives and when editing care should be taken to ensure their accuracy. However, they can provide a very valuable visualisation of in which areas attention needs to be focused and help spot and correct errors.
Openstreetbugs
At OpenStreetBugs you can mark and describe bugs in OSM on a map without authentication. Hopefully someone else will notice your mark and act upon.
OSB Reports Here there are OSB GPX and HTML files and statistics.
MapDust
MapDust is a bug tool operated by skobbler, which is also integrated into their turn-by-turn navigation solution, thus originally focusing on navigation relevant bugs but now serving as a general bug tool. As many of its users may not be aware of OpenStreetMap at all, there are also quite a few non relevant error reports included, but it does contain many good reports, not covered by other tools too. Currently it is available in English, German, French, Italien, Spanish and Romanian.
Error Detection Tools
Error Detecting Tools check the OSM data for potential data errors, inaccuracy or sparsely mapped places. The OSM community should check if these structures are really wrong and can correct the data for a continiously rising data quality.
Keep Right
Keep Right (keepright.ipax.at) shows errors on map or list form. System for reporting false positives or for labeling a bug as fixed. Rules to automatically detect the following error types: non closed areas, dead ended oneways, almost junctions, deprecated tags, missing tags, bridges/tunnels without layer, motorways without ref, places of worship without religion, POIs without name, ways without nodes, floating islands, railway crossings without tag, wrong used railway crossing tag, FIXME items, and relations without type. KeepRight shows tens of thousands of errors, including many that have little impact (e.g. a stream intersecting a highway: technically a bridge is needed here, but existing renders assume the stream is in a culvert).
Osmose
Osmose [1] is a tool with several checks on quality of data running actually over France. (seems to have data for other countries too...)
Duplicate Nodes
The Duplicate nodes map ([2]) is a tool written by Matt to show all duplicate nodes, i.e. nodes with identical Coordinates, on a slippy map. These are particularly prevalent in U.S. TIGER data, and so the map gives a good indication of TIGER fixup progress. There is more information about the tool, and how to fix duplicate nodes on the about page
JOSM Validator
JOSM/Validator. A feature of JOSM that checks data loaded into the editor, highlights errors and warnings, and can (on request) perform some automatic fixes.
The Gary68 tools
Gary68 has created a whole bunch of quality assurance tools:
- WayCheck is a program which checks the OSM data (file) for open ends and crossings. The found positions must be evaluated by a user and he or she can correct the data in JOSM or Potlatch or post a mark in Openstreetbugs. The Waycheck page lists reports generated by the program and any user is encouraged to run reports and correct errors listed on the page and its links. This is especially useful for the quality of routing related data
- MotorwayCheck lists problems related to highway:motorway. Page also shows reports.
- osmdiff is a program which compares two osm files and document the changes, in writing and drawing. Some reports can be seen here: osmdiff reports.
- unmappedplaces finds a list of potentially unmapped places. These are reported on the wiki page there (or Unkartografiert page for german places) The query can be run for other countries as well.
- Mapping Quality is the successor of unmappedplaces. See the wiki page for the results. You get automatic street directory, KPIs (numbers) per place, maps that show status, and CSV files for further processing.
- SomeChecks peforms... some checks: Oneway check, Roundabout check, Double node check (ways), Area Check
- Relation Diff - Differences in relations
"All" bugs as GPX file
All results from the checks done by Gary68 can be obtained as a GPX file for use i.e. in JOSM. These checks mainly cover Germany. Openstreetbugs are covered as well. It is also possible to get data for a bounding box only:
- All check results in GPX allbugs.gpx
- Create a GPX file with all bugs for a certain bounding box: extract PERMALINK could be http://www.gary68.de/osm/qa/gpx/extract.php?left=7&right=8&top=49&bottom=48
Checks are usually run every one or two weeks.
Actual run of quality check scripts from above
Collection of several scripts described above, run on your country. If it is a rainy and wet day and you do not want to go out, fixing these data issues is a useful kind of "armchair mapping" :
shinguz.ch OSM Quality Assurance
Coastline Error Checker
Coastline error checker ([3]) shows holes and other problems in coastlines.
OSM Inspector
OSM Inspector ([4]) has several views for specific mapping needs.
Public transport validator
ÖPNV-Validator ([5]) checks if a public transport relation has valid tags according the new public transport schema User:Oxomoa/Public_transport_schema. This schema is now in the voting process for its own validation Proposed_features/Public_Transport.
NoName Map
NoName map ([6]) - Map showing streets with no names updated using minutely diffs
TIGER Edited Map
TIGER Edited Map ([7]) - Map showing which areas of the U.S. have been edited since the TIGER import
Coarse Highway
Ragged highways with few points (blog entry): Coarse Highways
OS Locator Musical Chairs
OS Locator Musical Chairs ([8]) attempts to intelligently match OSM streets in GB against the OS Locator streetname database and show a browsable interface of the results.
Turn Restrictions Analyser
Turn restriction analyser - displays turn restrictions on a map and highlights errors
Maplint
Maplint is an osmarender configuration for highlighting errors. It used to be prominently available as a layer on the front page, updated by the tiles@home.
US Interstate refs
US interstate refs List of ref numbers and corresponding OSM interstates
Yet another validation tool for osm data
Yet another validation tool for osm data provides a slippy map with image layers to help people find possible errors in the data (only europe). The service provides layers with roads having no name, no ref, no oneway; Drawing fixmes and notes texts; and layers showing administrative surface by admin_level. [9]
Broken polygons
[10] - Polygons which present a problem for Nominatim. These ‘broken’ polygons could be where the interior of a multipolygon is disconnected or, where a polygon intersects itself.
Visualization Tools
ITO Map
ITO Map [11] is a map overlay service from ITO. The layer cover different data types: Barriers, Buildings and addresses, Car parks, Electricity distribution, Fixme, Former railways, Layers, Metro, Navigable waterways, Railways, Schools, Speed limits km/h, Speed limits km/h: major roads, Speed limits mph, Speed limits mph: major roads, Tracktype, Unknown roads, Water.
Monitoring Tools
In addition to the above error and bug reporting tools, there are a number of tools that allow you to keep track of changes that allow to spot erroneous changes and edits. For example if you are very familiar with an area and have thoroughly mapped it, you might want to follow all changes and verify that no vandalism happens in the area.
See also:
osm.org
API v0.6 introduced the concept of changeset. This is a group of edits made by particular user, with a comment. Some new displays have been developed for the web front end:
- 'Recent Changes' display showing any recently closed changesets across the map
- 'history' tab showing recently closed changesets which overlap with a particular bounding box
- 'User edits' display showing recently closed changesets by a particular user.
OpenStreetMap Watch List
OWL (OpenStreetMap Watch List) - Watch what is happening in OSM in a special area.
ITO world OSM Mapper
OSM_Mapper - osmmapper is a tool to let you see when an area has been mapped the last time respectively over the time.
Real-time change following
- LiveEditMapViewerJ is a java program that allows you to follow changes as they happen on a world map.
- Khtmlib - khtml.org ticker allows you to follow changes in realtime on a slippy map and get additional data about them
History Browser
- History Browser with diff tool
History Viewer
- OSM History Viewer shows changesets in a visual way, highlighting object positions before and after a given changeset, and also highlighting modified objects that were not moved
OSM Aware
- OSM Aware feeds OSM changes as KML files
Historical Coverage
- Historical Coverage service creates animations of the historical development in a specific area
UserActivity
- UserActivity Statistics and maps of user activity in two osm files. Possibly detect vandalism... Reports (for Germany) generated periodically.
Assistant Tools
Traffic Sign Tool
Traffic Sign Tool Assistant to get the right tags for German Roadsigns
QualityStreetMap
QualityStreetMap ([12]) is a large grid for coordinating mapping work. You can select a tile and mark it complete for a specific tag. The grid covers the whole world and any tag. To edit the grid you have to login with your OSM account. Zoom in to see the grid (min zool level 12). The service is in beta.
MaxSpeed-Karte
DE:MaxSpeed Karte ([13]) - Map showing streets tagged with maxspeed
NavigationDebugMap ([14]) Slippy map showing maxspeed, turn restrictions and other routing properties
Road lists
In Germany we requested different official lists: Straßenverzeichnis
Tag Statistics
To compare the use of a tag or to see typos use this statistical tools. See also: Stats
Taginfo
Taginfo is a system for finding and aggregating information about OSM tags and making it browsable and searchable.
TagWatch
Browse tag statistics http://tagwatch.stoecker.eu/Europe/En/
TagStat
Search for tags and their use http://tagstat.hypercube.telascience.org/
ITO Map
ITO Map [15] is a map overlay service from ITO. It runs scripts that highlight specifics tags which shows how consistent, or not, use of that tag is. It displays groups of related tags simultaneously.
More...
- File:Osm-planet-1.jpg Picture of the OSM Coverage
- TIGER fixup/250 cities#Maps - A coordinated push to fix some basic routing problems in the U.S.
- no name, no ref, no oneway, notes & fixmes (europe only)
- OSM QA App allows you to lock areas to get no conflicts when doing teamwork
- T@h heatmap Coverage as heatmap
- Report Unmapped Places in Germany 8/2010
- OSMatrix overlay of OSM activities, data density, historical development and further indices
External compares
- SotM 2010 session: OpenStreetMap – Ready for business!
- Bachelor Thesis comparing OSM 2009 with Navteq datas (german)
- SOTM2010 - Logiball - OSM Spain vs. commercial data compare
- Report OSM Quality Evaluation in UK 7/2007
