Spatial collaboration networks of OpenStreetMap

Abstract

The interaction of the editing operations from different OpenStreetMap (OSM) contributors provides valuable information on collaboration patterns. This chapter describes a new type of spatial collaboration network which can be extracted from OSM edit history data. Drawing from current literature in the field of Social Network Analysis different concepts of collaboration are discussed. It is shown how to apply the measurement of interlocking responses known from research on non-spatial collaboration in wikis to collaboration in OSM. The advantages of the approach are demonstrated by an analysis of collaboration on OSM sample data.