[OSM-talk] [OSM-dev] FW: OSM stats quote for a paper

Andy Robinson Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk
Fri Sep 21 15:16:24 BST 2007


Frederik Ramm [mailto:frederik at remote.org] wrote:
>Sent: 21 September 2007 1:52 PM
>To: Andy Robinson
>Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org; 'osm-dev'
>Subject: Re: [OSM-dev] FW: OSM stats quote for a paper
>
>Hi,
>
>> Hi Andy, I am writing a short paper and citing OSM as an exemplar
>> of new,
>> creative mapping practice. I'd like to quote a statistic to show
>> the level
>> of effort people are ging to OSM. Is it possible to (easily) calculate
>> length in kilometres of roads mapped in the last six months say?
>
>His request is difficult to answer because what does "mapped"
>actually mean? Plus, with all the TIGER and AND imports, any world-
>wide figure would be heavily distorted (or you would have to filter
>those).
>
>I have a planet.osm UK+Ireland excerpt from 07 March and the same
>area for 05 September, then counted the length of roads. Here's the
>result (looks broken in mail but easy to create a CSV from it if you
>want to open it in OpenOffice etc - all figures in metres):
>
>"highway class","March '07","Sep '07","difference"
>"unclassified        ",12145635,26974997,14829362
>"primary             ",13307013,23149042,9842029
>"trunk               ",8942197,18199030,9256833
>"residential         ",8141093,17858331,9717238
>"secondary           ",6638616,15045177,8406561
>"motorway            ",7102946,7496052,393106
>"tertiary            ",726593,6399821,5673228
>"footway             ",2844692,6060560,3215868
>"cycleway            ",573560,2183086,1609526
>"bridleway           ",860739,1728260,867521
>"service             ",624702,1726657,1101955
>"motorway_link       ",537020,845698,308678
>"track               ",177062,696127,519065
>"minor               ",695783,687587,-8196
>"trunk_link          ",217150,523527,306377
>"fixme               ",0,201922,201922
>"byway               ",102622,178680,76058
>"unsurfaced          ",229358,161657,-67701
>"primary_link        ",87764,119645,31881
>"pedestrian          ",26538,109205,82667
>"footpath            ",53340,32123,-21217
>"total",64034423,130377184,66342761
>
>So if that data is to be believed, around 66 thousand kilometres of
>roads have been added in the UK and Ireland during the last 6 months.
>(Reality check, anyone - is that figure probable?)
>
>That could come close to what he wants. But note:
>
>* A lot of work goes into doing amenities, coastlines, railroads,
>forests, and waterways - not covered by this figure.
>* Stuff that gets deleted reduces my figure (but the work has been
>done so the figure is too low).
>* Dual carriageways are counted double.
>* I have omitted lots of strange highway "types"
>* everything might be wrong for some reason or other ;-)
>


Frederik,

Thanks, that's really useful. I also think the totals are almost certainly
realistic. The total length of road in the Great Britain (excluding
bridleways/footways/cycleways etc) is just under 400,000 km (2004 dft
values). The equivalent set from your figures to Sept 07 is approximately
118,000km. That figure of course includes Ireland, but if I look at the
volume in Ireland alone its relatively small. So perhaps we can say for the
UK we now have around one quarter of the total road network completed and
it's growing at an ever increasing rate (currently 10,000km per month for
the same highway types). At that constant rate it will take a further 30
months to complete the UK. Let's hope it continues to grow more quickly than
that so that we can hit our completion target in half the time - ie end of
2008 as SteveC keeps predicting :-)

Cheers

Andy

Andy Robinson
Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk








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