HOT tools to keep up with the OpenStreetMap Community

Mikel Maron
Tue, 17 May 2016 08:00:00 -0400

The OpenStreetMap community and database are moving so fast, it is hard to track all the growth. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and Missing Maps have recently launched new tools to understand the progress of local communities, projects and individuals. Mapbox has been happy to be part of the development conversations, and we want to share them with you. These are incredible resources for all OpenStreetMap communities to find opportunities, focus resources, build relationships and scale our network.

OSM Analytics

With OSM Analytics, you can interactively analyze and visualize growth of the map and the user community in a particular location. The tools can chart the number of roads and buildings added over time, and visualize changes before and after events. This has been a key help for tracking progress in the Ecuador Earthquake Response.

OSM Analytics is built on OSM QA Tiles, and has room to grow to other kinds of features and deeper analysis. Try it out on osm-analytics.org, and contribute to development on GitHub.

OSM Stats

Our friends at Development Seed built OSM Stats for the new Missing Maps Profiles and Leaderboards. It tracks contributions to specific mapping projects and events in real time, with an architecture designed to listen to the high volume of data distributed from OpenStreetMap. Compete against your fellow mappers, earn badges, and visualize exactly where and when you’ve contributed. Find out more and contribute to the OSM Stats GitHub project.

How could you use these tools, and what more can they do to build OpenStreetMap community? We would love to hear your ideas!