Abstract
Traditionally, national mapping agencies produced datasets and map products for a low number of specified and internally consistent scales, i.e. at a common level of detail (LoD). With the advent of projects like OpenStreetMap, data users are increasingly confronted with the task of dealing with heterogeneously detailed and scaled geodata. Knowing the scale of geodata is very important for mapping processes such as for generalization of label placement or land-cover studies for instance. In the following chapter, we review and compare two concurrent approaches at automatically assigning scale to OSM objects. The first approach is based on a multi-criteria decision making model, with a rationalist approach for defining and parameterizing the respective criteria, yielding five broad LoD classes. The second approach attempts to identify a single metric from an analysis process, which is then used to interpolate a scale equivalence. Both approaches are combined and tested against well-known Corine data, resulting in an improvement of the scale inference process. The chapter closes with a presentation of the most pressing open problems.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Barron C, Neis P, Zipf A (2013) Towards intrinsic quality analysis of OpenStreetMap datasets. In: Online proceedings of the international workshop on action and interaction in volunteered geographic information (ACTIVITY). Agile
Bereuter P, Weibel R (2013) Real-time generalization of point data in mobile and web mapping using quadtrees. Cartogr Geogr Inf Sci 40(4):271–281
Biljecki F, Ledoux H, Stoter J, Zhao J (2014) Formalisation of the level of detail in 3D city modelling. Comput Environ Urban Syst 48:1–15
Chave J (2013) The problem of pattern and scale in ecology: what have we learned in 20 years? Ecol Lett 16:4–16
Clark JH (1976) Hierarchical geometric models for visible surface algorithms. Commun ACM 19(10):547–554
Dutton G (1999) Scale, sinuosity and point selection in digital line generalization. Cartogr Geogr Inf Sci 26(1):33–53
Feick R, Robertson C (2014) A multi-scale approach to exploring urban places in geotagged photographs. Comput Environ Urban Syst (in press)
Figueira J, Greco S, Ehrogott M (eds) (2005a) Multiple criteria decision analysis: state of the art surveys of international series in operations research and management science, vol 78. Springer, Heidelberg
Figueira J, Mousseau V, Roy B (2005b) ELECTRE methods. In: Figueira J, Greco S, Ehrogott M (eds) Multiple criteria decision analysis: state of the art surveys. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 133–162
Freitag U (1962) Der Kartenmaßstab—Betrachtungen über den Maßstabsbegriff in der Kartographie. Kartographische Nachrichten, Heft 5,12. Jahrgang, Gütersloh, pp 134–146
Girres J-F (2011) An evaluation of the impact of cartographic generalisation on length measurement computed from linear vector databases. In: Proceedings of 25th international cartographic conference (ICC’11), Paris, France. ICA
Girres J-F, Touya G (2010) Quality assessment of the french OpenStreetMap dataset. Trans GIS 14(4):435–459
Goodchild MF, Li L (2012) Assuring the quality of volunteered geographic information. Spat Stat 1:110–120
Grosso E, Perret J, Brasebin M (2012) GEOXYGENE: an interoperable platform for geographical application development. In: Innovative software development in GIS (Chapter 3), Wiley, New York, pp 67–90
Haggett P, Chorley RJ, Stoddart DR (1965) Scale standards in geographical research: a new measure of areal magnitude. Nature 205:844–847
Haklay M (2010) How good is volunteered geographical information? A comparative study of OpenStreetMap and ordnance survey datasets. Environ Plann B: Plann Des 37(4):682–703
Haklay M, Basiouka S, Antoniou V, Ather A (2010) How many volunteers does it take to map an area well? The validity of linus’s law to volunteered geographic information. Cartogr J 47(4):315–322
Keßler C, de Groot RT (2013) Trust as a proxy measure for the quality of volunteered geographic information in the case of OpenStreetMap. In: Vandenbroucke D, Bucher B, Crompvoets J (eds) Geographic information science at the heart of Europe. Lecture notes in geoinformation and cartography. Springer International Publishing, New York, pp 21–37
Kolbe TH (2009) Representing and exchanging 3D city models with CityGML. In: Lee J, Zlatanova S (eds) 3D Geo-information sciences. Lecture notes in geoinformation and cartography. Springer, Berlin, pp 15–31
Levin SA (1992) The problem of pattern and scale in ecology. Ecology 73(6):1943–1967
Mondzech J, Sester M (2011) Quality analysis of OpenStreetMap data based on application needs. Cartogr Int J Geogr Inf Geovisual 46(2):115–125
Mooney P, Corcoran P (2012) The annotation process in OpenStreetMap. Trans GIS 16(4):561–579
Reimer A, Kempf C, Rylov M, Neis P (2014) Assigning scale equivalencies to OpenStreetMap polygons. In: Proceedings of AutoCarto international symposium on automated cartography 2014 (accepted)
Rosenholtz R, Li Y, Nakano L (2007) Measuring visual clutter. J Vis 7(2):17
Sester M, Jokar Arsanjani J, Klammer R, Burghardt D, Haunert J-H (2014) Integrating and generalising volunteered geographic information. In: Burghardt D, Duchêne C, Mackaness W (eds) Abstracting geographic data in a data rich world. Springer, Berlin, pp 119–155
Skarlatidou A, Haklay M, Cheng T (2011) Trust in web GIS: the role of the trustee attributes in the design of trustworthy web GIS applications. Int J Geogr Inf Sci 25(12):1913–1930
Steinhardt U (1999) Die Theorie der geographischen Dimensionen in der Angewandten Landschaftsökologie. In: Schneider-Sliwa et al (eds) Angewandte Landschaftsökologie. Springer, Berlin
Stoter J, Burghardt D, Duchêne C, Baella B, Bakker N, Blok C, Pla M, Regnauld N, Touya G, Schmid S (2009) Methodology for evaluating automated map generalization in commercial software. Comput Environ Urban Syst 33(5):311–324
Sudgen D, Hamilton P (1971) Scale, systems and regional geography. Area 3(3):139–144
Surowiecki J (2004) The wisdom of crowds. Anchor Books
Töpfer F, Pillewizer W (1966) The principle of selection. Cartogr J 3:10–16
Töpfer F (1979) Kartographische generalisierung, 2nd edn. VEB Hermann Haack, Gotha
Touya G (2012) What is the level of detail of OpenStreetMap? In: Workshop on role of volunteered geographic information in advancing science: quality and credibility. Columbus (Ohio), USA
Touya G, Brando-Escobar C (2013) Detecting level-of-detail inconsistencies in volunteered geographic information data sets. Cartogr Int J Geogr Inf Geovisual 48(2):134–143
Touya G, Baley M (2014) Harmonizing level of details in OpenStreetMap based maps. In: Duckham M, Stewart K, Pebesma E (eds) Proceedings of GIScience 2014—Poster session, Vienna, Austria
Zielstra D, Zipf A (2010) A comparative study of proprietary geodata and volunteered geographic information for Germany. In: Proceedings of 13th Agile international conference on geographic information science. Guimaraes, Portugal
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Touya, G., Reimer, A. (2015). Inferring the Scale of OpenStreetMap Features. In: Jokar Arsanjani, J., Zipf, A., Mooney, P., Helbich, M. (eds) OpenStreetMap in GIScience. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14280-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14280-7_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-14279-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-14280-7
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)