Exploring regional differences in the representation of urban green spaces in OpenStreetMap

Abstract

OpenStreetMap (OSM) has been gaining importance in land use mapping due to its free and global availability and high information content especially in urban areas.Since OSM data is created by volunteers and without strict mapping rules, the OSM tags used to mark geographic objects may vary across space.This is especially the case for urban green spaces which leads to different representations of them in OSM.A good understanding of these differences is necessary for the design of a universally applicable algorithm for urban vegetation mapping using OSM data.This study explores which OSM tags indicate urban green spaces, how strong this indication is and how much this varies across different regions.This is done using an exploratory data analysis based on statistical and graphical methods applied to four different cities. Results show that the representation of urban vegetation is influenced by socio-cultural context and the purpose of the map production.Furthermore, the inherent vagueness in the conceptualization of natural objects leads to different associations between OSM tags and vegetation presence across regions.

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