Soviet City Plans and OpenStreetMap: a comparative analysis

Abstract

The rapid growth of urban populations presents challenges to the sustainable management of cities and requires accurate geospatial data. Historical maps offer a largely untapped resource for enhancing OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Soviet military mapping presents a potentially rich geospatial resource for this purpose. This paper compares these global mapping initiatives through an analysis of the symbology used in Soviet 1:10,000 city plans of La Paz, Bolivia (1977), Port-au-Prince, Haiti (1983) and Frankfurt am Main, West Germany (1983), and in modern OSM coverage of the same cities. The results indicate that Soviet and OSM symbologies are similarly comprehensive regarding their inclusion of some topographic features, notably road infrastructure, but that they exhibit key differences in their coverage of physical and urban environments. This highlights some areas in which the symbology, coverage and content of OSM may be enhanced by Soviet mapping and developed to serve its wide range of user groups. The paper also indicates how the harmonisation of Soviet and OSM symbologies could form an accessible and comprehensive global geospatial resource for applications that require detailed knowledge of amenities and terrain, such as disaster relief and environmental management, particularly in locations where other geospatial resources are scarce.