The world’s user-generated road map is more than 80% complete

Barrington-Leigh, Christopher; Millard-Ball, Adam · 2017 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0180698

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Summary

This study addresses the critical lack of information regarding the completeness of OpenStreetMap (OSM) road data, particularly in low-income countries where official geographic data is often scarce or unreliable. While OSM serves as the primary global source for openly licensed geospatial road data, its utility for research and policy depends on knowing how complete the network is in any given location. The authors aim to provide country-level estimates of OSM road completeness, explain the heterogeneity in data quality across regions, and compare OSM-derived road lengths against existing global datasets. To achieve this, the researchers employed two complementary, independent methods. First, they conducted a visual assessment using a stratified, probability-weighted sample of 45 points per country, comparing OSM data against satellite imagery to count missing street edges. These observations were analyzed using a multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) model, which incorporated country-level covariates such as GDP per capita, Internet penetration, population size, and governance indicators to improve estimate precision. Second, they analyzed the historical growth of the OSM database by fitting sigmoid curves to the cumulative length of contributions, allowing them to estimate the saturation level (total road length) for each country based on the assumption that mapping efforts eventually plateau. The results indicate that globally, the OSM road network is approximately 83% complete. More than 40% of countries, including several in the developing world, possess a fully mapped street network. The study found that completeness correlates positively with good governance and Internet access. Additionally, the relationship between population density and completeness is U-shaped: both sparsely populated areas and dense cities are better mapped than intermediate-density regions. Crucially, the authors found that existing global datasets used by the World Bank undercount road lengths by more than 30% compared to the OSM-derived estimates. These findings suggest that researchers and policymakers can increasingly rely on OSM for global analyses, as it offers a more comprehensive and accessible alternative to proprietary or official datasets. The study highlights that OSM’s completeness is sufficient for many applications worldwide and provides a methodological framework for assessing the saturation of other crowdsourced data. By revealing significant undercounts in traditional datasets, the paper underscores the value of user-generated geographic information for understanding global infrastructure, economic development, and environmental patterns.

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• comparative international