Towards a sustainable volunteered community: An analysis of the OpenStreetMap community in Japan and its activity after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

Artifacts and community activities of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) have been used for a variety of social activities. In recent years, in Japan, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has promoted open government as evidenced by its open government data strategy. It is expected that improving the quality of the OpenStreetMap will be one of its open data projects. There is a unique feature of the OpenStreetMap of early Japan in the background of the challenges. The two unique feature of the OpenStreetMap of early Japan are summarized below: (1) Import of large-scale data, such as digital national land information data has been by small contributors. (2) At the time of crisis mapping of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, the basic data of the OpenStreetMap had not been maintenance enough. The purpose of this study is to verified unique feature by data analysis. The two findings of this study are summarized below: (1) In Japan, the number of artifacts is very large with respect to the number of contributors. (3) An unusual number or artifacts were created by contributors immediately after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake.