Value of OSM
Page for estimating the financial value of OSM data, or the cost of producing it, based on a mailing list thread in June 2006
Considering it is estimated to take 1-2 days for mapping a medium-sized town, it should be possible to map somewhere in a weekend (see Weekend mapping projects)
Speed of surveying, estimates
| Method | Surveying time | Editing time |
|---|---|---|
| Roads, by car | ||
| Country roads, by bike | ||
| Towns and villages, by bike | Approx 1-2 days for medium-sized town (like Sandy, which is about 40% complete after an afternoon's (5 hours) cycling)
Waddington took 6-7 hours (over 5 days) 2.5 hours/85 roads Wellingborough Shipston-on-Stour - population approx. 4,500 - 3 hours to survey on cycle |
About 2-3 hours per town or village, including all road names and designations
Shipston-on-Stour - population approx. 4,500 - 4 hours to tag all streets, road names, phone boxes, amenities, landuse etc. |
| Cities, by bike | 1 hour per 15 miles of street?
150 hours for 100,000 population, outer suburbs of London |
1 hour of editing per hour of tracklog recording |
| Cities, by foot | 1 hour per 3 miles of street? | |
| London streets, using eCourier data | n/a (but thanks to the couriers!) | |
| Bridleways and cycle routes | 1 hour per 15 miles? | 0.5 hours per 30 miles of cycleway or footpath? |
| Footpaths | 1 hour per 3 miles + travel time to reach the footpaths | |
| Rivers, by satellite photo | n/a | Ojw did about 40 miles of the Thames in about 4 hours. Most of that time was waiting for data-transfer |
Estimates of OSM size
| Feature | Approx. number in OSM database | Estimation method |
|---|---|---|
| Towns | at least 11 towns in the UK, plus 17 villages near Bedford | from PDF atlas/places.txt |
| Cities | at least 20 in the UK | from PDF atlas/places.txt |
| Roads | 34,000 miles | Planet.osm from may, including untagged segments assumed to be roads, but excluding things tagged as railways and paths |
| Bridleways and cycleways | ||
| Footpaths | 500 miles | Planet.osm from May |
| Railways | 500 miles | Planet.osm from May |
Cost of equivalent commercial data
Accenture applied four methods to generate a valuation range for OSM. After evaluating the variability and uncertainty of many of the underlying assumptions in these approaches, the community replacement cost method was deemed the most reliable method for estimating the value of the OSM asset. Combining the total replacement cost of the OSM database, the value of the software development effort and industry standard maintenance costs yielded a total community replacement cost of $1,672,415,000 [1]