Open Street Maps - Nashville

Overview

I lived in Nashville for 5 years. I was curious to learn more about Nashville using the Open Street Maps data. In this project I analyze, clean and find insights from the Open Streets Maps data for Nashville.

Insights:

1. Around 55% of the total contribution to the database came from the top 10 users
2. Around 17% of the users are one time contributors
3. The metro extract for Nashville includes several surrounding cities and not just the Nashville metro
4. Surprised to learn that graveyard is the number 1 amenity!
5. In the top 10 sources of data we see a public and private partnership. a. Public : (Tiger which is part of the US Dept of Commerce, tdot - tennessee dept of transportation, USGS - US Board of Geographic Names) b. Private : Yahoo, Bing

Suggested improvements data collection:

If we don’t want to depend on private companies to have streetmap data, it is essential to educate and incentivize people to contribute data to an open source public platform like openstreetmaps. One way to do it would be to partner with public schools and teach high school students the importance of openstreetmaps and teach them how to contribute to the openstreetmaps. It could be one of their assignments.

Benefits: This will encourage a discussion among the students and their families about the importance of publicly owned street data. Some of the students might go on to become life long contributors. A lot of additional data can be captured if this can be done in schools across states.

Challenges: It would be hard for the openstreet community to convince the public schools to include openstreetmaps contribution as an assignment in their course work. It would also be challenging to get students interested about contributing to openstreetmaps. But if done, this can really help in improving data in openstreetmaps while allowing students contribute to the community.

Project Link: Open Street Maps Nashville