Employing Incremental Outlines for OpenStreetMap Data Updating

Abstract

The updating of changing information plays a significant role in ensuring the quality of OpenStreetMap, which is usually completed by mapping the whole changing objects with a high degree of uncertainty. The incremental object-based approach provides opportunities to reduce the unreliability of data, while challenges of data inaccuracy and redundancy remain. This paper provides an incremental outline-based approach for OpenStreetMap data updating to solve this issue. First, incremental outlines are delineated from the changed objects and distinguished through a spatial classification. Then, attribute information corresponding to incremental outlines is proposed to assist in describing the physical changes. Finally, through a geometric calculation based on both the spatial and attribute information, updating operations are constructed with a variety of rules to activate the data updating process. The proposed approach was verified by updating an area in the OpenStreetMap datasets. The result shows that the incremental outline-based updating approach can reduce both the time and storage costs compared to incremental objects and further improve data quality in the updating process.