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OpenStreetMap in GIScience pp 1–15Cite as

An Introduction to OpenStreetMap in Geographic Information Science: Experiences, Research, and Applications

Part of the Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography book series (LNGC)

Abstract

Recent years have seen new ways of collecting geographic information via the crowd rather than organizations. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a prime example of this approach and has brought free access to a wealth of geographic information—for many parts of the world, for the first time. The strong growth in the last few years made more and more people consider it as a potential alternative to commercial or authoritative data. The increasing availability of ever-richer data sets of freely available geographic information led to strong interest of researchers and practitioners in the usability of this data—both its limitations and potential. Both the unconventional way the data is being produced as well as its richness and heterogeneity have led to a range of different research questions on how we can assess, mine, enrich, or just use this data in different domains and for a wide range of applications. While this book cannot present all types of research around OpenStreetMap or even the broader category of User Generated Content (UGC) or Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), it attempts to provide an overview of the current state of the art by presenting some typical and recent examples of work in GIScience on OSM. This chapter provides an introduction to the scholarly work on OpenStreetMap and its current state and summarizes the contributions to this book.

Keywords

  • Volunteer Geographic Information
  • User Generate Content
  • Spatial Data Infrastructure
  • Word Cloud
  • Global Position System Track

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. GIScience Research Group, Institute of Geography, Heidelberg University, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jamal Jokar Arsanjani & Alexander Zipf

  2. Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland

    Peter Mooney

  3. Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 2, 3584 CS, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Marco Helbich

Authors
  1. Jamal Jokar Arsanjani
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  2. Alexander Zipf
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  3. Peter Mooney
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  4. Marco Helbich
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jamal Jokar Arsanjani .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. GIScience research group, Institute of Geography, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jamal Jokar Arsanjani

  2. Geography, Institute of Geography, Heidelberg, Germany

    Alexander Zipf

  3. Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University, Maynooth Co Kildare, Kildare, Ireland

    Peter Mooney

  4. Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Marco Helbich

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Jokar Arsanjani, J., Zipf, A., Mooney, P., Helbich, M. (2015). An Introduction to OpenStreetMap in Geographic Information Science: Experiences, Research, and Applications. 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_1

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