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Investigating the properties of OpenStreetMap provenance graphs

Investigating the properties of OpenStreetMap provenance graphs
Investigating the properties of OpenStreetMap provenance graphs
The production of geographic data has traditionally been the purview of institutions such as the Ordnance Survey and US Geological Survey. The past three decades have seen a technological revolution brought about by mobile computing resources and the World Wide Web. Ordinary citizens now have the tools to produce geographic information en-masse. OpenStreetMap, one of the world’s most important and extensive geographic datasets has arisen out of this Volunteered Geographic Information phenomenon. Freely available to be both used and produced by ordinary people, it represents a paradigm shift which has changed our relationship with geographic information.
The free and open nature of OpenStreetMap has given rise to novel and often mission-critical uses, often among people with little or no interest in traditional quality assurance frameworks. The shift away from authoritative data sources and traditional quality assurance paradigms raises problems for geospatial data consumers who still need to make informed trust judgements. In a milieu characterised by a diverse and dynamic range of use cases, large volumes of data and no established quality assurance paradigms, we need new ways of understanding Volunteered Geographic Information. One of the most difficult components to document all the contributors and their contribution practices, which operate at a scale and diversity not found in traditional science.
Provenance data encodes much of this information and is useful for providing localised data documentation. Provenance Network Analytics is a methodology which has the potential to provide a principled automated means of analysing provenance data at scale. However, it has only been implemented in relatively simple, smaller scale use cases. OpenStreetMap does not explicitly record provenance data. There is also no framework for understanding of the necessary measurement and interpretation strategies
In this thesis we address these issues by providing a novel method of provenance reconstruction which produces a provenance dataset in an interoperable standard. We provide a framework for provenance measurement using metrics which allow the analysis of large volumes of data. Using OpenStreetMap provenance extracted from the Southampton area in the UK, we conduct a descriptive analysis of OpenStreetMap provenance data. The results provide an understanding of the drivers of variation in OpenStreetMap contribution practices. This work repositions VGI provenance as a new and novel form of geographic data which can provide insights into the nature of Volunteered Geographic Information and the human and physical environment it describes.
University of Southampton
Roper, Bernard Alban
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Roper, Bernard Alban
1d217e9e-9d47-44c2-bfc0-47e845b74b81
Martin, David
e5c52473-e9f0-4f09-b64c-fa32194b162f
Chapman, Age
721b7321-8904-4be2-9b01-876c430743f1
Cavazzi, Stefano
1e304edf-411e-4221-a174-e05a302aac35

Roper, Bernard Alban (2023) Investigating the properties of OpenStreetMap provenance graphs. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis, 225pp.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

The production of geographic data has traditionally been the purview of institutions such as the Ordnance Survey and US Geological Survey. The past three decades have seen a technological revolution brought about by mobile computing resources and the World Wide Web. Ordinary citizens now have the tools to produce geographic information en-masse. OpenStreetMap, one of the world’s most important and extensive geographic datasets has arisen out of this Volunteered Geographic Information phenomenon. Freely available to be both used and produced by ordinary people, it represents a paradigm shift which has changed our relationship with geographic information.
The free and open nature of OpenStreetMap has given rise to novel and often mission-critical uses, often among people with little or no interest in traditional quality assurance frameworks. The shift away from authoritative data sources and traditional quality assurance paradigms raises problems for geospatial data consumers who still need to make informed trust judgements. In a milieu characterised by a diverse and dynamic range of use cases, large volumes of data and no established quality assurance paradigms, we need new ways of understanding Volunteered Geographic Information. One of the most difficult components to document all the contributors and their contribution practices, which operate at a scale and diversity not found in traditional science.
Provenance data encodes much of this information and is useful for providing localised data documentation. Provenance Network Analytics is a methodology which has the potential to provide a principled automated means of analysing provenance data at scale. However, it has only been implemented in relatively simple, smaller scale use cases. OpenStreetMap does not explicitly record provenance data. There is also no framework for understanding of the necessary measurement and interpretation strategies
In this thesis we address these issues by providing a novel method of provenance reconstruction which produces a provenance dataset in an interoperable standard. We provide a framework for provenance measurement using metrics which allow the analysis of large volumes of data. Using OpenStreetMap provenance extracted from the Southampton area in the UK, we conduct a descriptive analysis of OpenStreetMap provenance data. The results provide an understanding of the drivers of variation in OpenStreetMap contribution practices. This work repositions VGI provenance as a new and novel form of geographic data which can provide insights into the nature of Volunteered Geographic Information and the human and physical environment it describes.

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Published date: 2023

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 475746
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/475746
PURE UUID: 6c924cfe-9841-4f8f-93db-b41f8634815e
ORCID for Bernard Alban Roper: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5011-846X
ORCID for David Martin: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-0397-0769
ORCID for Age Chapman: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-3814-2587

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 27 Mar 2023 16:45
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 01:59

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Contributors

Author: Bernard Alban Roper ORCID iD
Thesis advisor: David Martin ORCID iD
Thesis advisor: Age Chapman ORCID iD
Thesis advisor: Stefano Cavazzi

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