Editing OpenStreetMap and exploring OpenStreetMap data with the {osmdata} package
Session 9
2024-10-23
Overview
What is OpenStreetMap?
How do you contribute to OpenStreetMap?
Practice : Editing with the iD EditorHow do you download data from OpenStreetMap?
Practice : Downloading data with {osmdata}
What is OpenStreetMap?
Created in 2004 in response to restrictive data sharing by the UK Ordnance Survey
Grew as the “Wikipedia of maps” in response to increasing cost of commercial services like Google Maps after 2011 price hikes
Using OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap isn’t just a map—it is a “global geodatabase of everything and anything that people add to the map”:
roads, crosswalks, speed bumps, stop lights
restaurants, daycares, playgrounds, cannons
forests, central business districts, boundaries
land cover, gravestones, utility ROWs
Who is using OpenStreetMap?
Individual users, developers, and researchers:
Apps and websites
Games
Advocacy and policy
Contributing to Open Street Map
Different editors have different reasons for contributing and contribute in different ways:
Individuals
Public agencies
Non-profit organizations
Corporations
Different editors use different tools, focus on editing different resources.
Other options include:
Tracing and digitizing imagery
Most editors for OpenStreetMap use high-resolution aerial, satellite, and drone-based imagery to trace or digitize:
POIs, addresses (points )
Roads, sidewalks, paths (lines )
School areas, central business districts, parks, lakes, playgrounds (polygons )
Learn more in Getting Started with OSM .
What is “good” editing?
Learn more in the Good practice section of the OpenStreetMap Wiki.
Verifiability
Not temporary
Map what is on the ground
Contributing with the JOSM Editor
Try out JOSM —the desktop editor for OpenStreetMap.
Practice editing data with the iD Editor
Downloading data with overpass turbo
overpass turbo OpenStreetMap , can run Overpass API queries and analyze the resulting OSM data interactively on a map.
Downloading data with {osmdata}
osmdataOverpass API .The package is designed to allow access to small-to-medium-sized OSM datasets (see osmextract
Practice downloading data with {osmdata}
Learn how to use the iD Editor.
Try 
overpass turbo, a web-based data filtering tool for OpenStreetMap, can run Overpass API queries and analyze the resulting OSM data interactively on a map.
