ITO’s update to our original 2008 animation, showing four years of edits to OpenStreetMap.org between 2008 and 2011. OpenStreetMap is a wiki-style map of the world, built by 750,000 registered contributors. This animation shows how the project has grown, displaying a white flash each time data is added or updated by a contributor.
Seeing the four years together illustrates how rapidly coverage has expanded. Europe saw a lot of edits in 2008, and activity has continued to increase steadily. Areas with little coverage in 2008 such as Latin America, Africa and especially Asia have seen dramatic increases in subsequent years, with growing mapping communities generating many more edits. In America, a bulk import of data (TIGER) dominated in 2008, while the following years show the growth of a vibrant mapping community.
Individual year versions are also available: 2008 (vimeo.com/2598878), 2009 (vimeo.com/48984268), 2010 (vimeo.com/48984269) and 2011 (vimeo.com/48984270).
This animation was produced by itoworld.com. It is licensed CC-BY-SA and can also be downloaded if you are logged in. The music is 'Open Electro' by Vincent Girès' jamendo.com/en/artist/silence and can be downloaded from archive.org/details/silence-silence.
Developed with support from ideasintransit.org