OpenStreetMap data quality enrichment through awareness raising and collective action tools—experiences from a European project

Nowadays, several research projects show interest in employing volunteered geographic information (VGI) to improve their systems through using up-to-date and detailed data. The European project CAP4Access is one of the successful examples of such international-wide research projects that aims to improve the accessibility of people with restricted mobility using crowdsourced data. In this project, OpenStreetMap (OSM) is used to extend OpenRouteService, a well-known routing platform. However, a basic challenge that this project tackled was the incompleteness of OSM data with regards to certain information that is required for wheelchair accessibility (e.g. sidewalk information, kerb data, etc.). In this article, we present the results of initial assessment of sidewalk data in OSM at the beginning of the project as well as our approach in awareness raising and using tools for tagging accessibility data into OSM database for enriching the sidewalk data completeness. Several experiments have been carried out in different European cities, and discussion on the results of the experiments as well as the lessons learned are provided. The lessons learned provide recommendations that help in organizing better mapping party events in the future. We conclude by reporting on how and to what extent the OSM sidewalk data completeness in these study areas have benefited from the mapping parties by the end of the project