Analyzing the Effect of Open Street Map During Crises: The Great East Japan Earthquake

Author

Imi, Yuma ; Hayakawa, Takeshi ; Ito, Takao

Author_Institution

Nagoya Inst. of Technol., Nagoya, Japan

fYear

2012

fDate

9-11 Sept. 2012

Firstpage

126

Lastpage

130

Abstract

This paper shows that OpenStreetMap (OSM) played a useful role during the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. OSM, which provides free geographical information, is sometimes referred to as a map version of Wikipedia. Its data additions, updates, and corrections are made available by its participants. We compare the data before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake and analyze the transitions. An increase in the amount of OSM editing was observed just after the earthquake. For example, the distance of roads was about six times greater and the area of buildings was approximately five times larger. The number of edited satellite photos nearly doubled. Data collection was carried out in OSM as soon as possible after the earthquake.

Keywords

cartography; data handling; Great East Japan earthquake; OSM editing; OpenStreetMap; Wikipedia; data addition; data collection; data correction; data update; geographical information; Buildings; Earthquakes; Encyclopedias; Internet; Roads; Satellites; Open Street Map (OSM) crisis mapping; the Great East Japan Earthquake (3.11);

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Commerce and Enterprise Computing (CEC), 2012 IEEE 14th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Hangzhou

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-6246-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CEC.2012.28

Filename

6470787