Organised Editing/Activities/Mapping Missing Streets in The USA

Background

As a part of on-going work to improve the quality of OpenStreetMap Mapbox SDKs collect anonymous data and device location to continuously update data. More information about telemetry is here.Link to our Github ticket.

We are now looking at mapping missing roads across several states. The current list of the states is California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. There may be more to come. How do we confirm it’s an actual street? Location data is used to identify possible new streets, hiking trails, and bike paths. We then confirm its existence with street level images (as Mapillary or Bing Streetside) and satellite imagery, and only then do we map the road.

What we are going to map?

It will be different types of motorable roads (highway=* ) according to OSM Wiki. Mostly will map only geometry without names and ref (excluding cases where we prolonging existing road), and not going to map different types of restrictions only in cases where it's obvious and easy to confirm by ground truth sources.

How do we confirm it’s an actual street?

Location data is used to identify possible new streets, hiking trails, and bike paths. We then confirm its existence with street level images (as Mapillary or Bing Streetside) and satellite imagery, and only then do we map the road.

What does telemetry data look like? More examples here

Example of using telemetry in To-Fix:

Example of mapping:

Here you can see a telemetry represented as bundle of ways (in blue color). Below screen OSM without a mapped road but we can clarify it with the satellite image and map it.

Contact person:

We welcome feedback, suggestions, and insights from local mappers. If you have questions about this work, or a specific edit by our team, please reach out to Natallia (natallia.zhouner@mapbox.com) or post a comment in a changeset.

A unique hashtag

We will use the hashtag #mbx_missingstr_usa

Goal of the activity

To improve map quality by adding roads.

Timeframe

We are going to start till the end of the week.

Any non-standard tools and data sources used, and their usage conditions

We used some internal tools for processing driver’s feedback and collecting telemetry. And for OSM edits we use only OSM iD and ground truth sources (Bing, Esri, Maxar satellite imagery and street level sources such as Mapilary ).

Results of last review periods

July

August

September

October

Team continue reviewing the Central and South parts of the USA, the ticket will be updated.