pnorman and stereo analysis of Changesets

Following the temporary interruption of Maxar Imagery Access for OSM edits, pnorman and stereo published in the last few days analysis by changesets of Maxar usage. They used OSM Changesets Data for the last 12 months to make partial analysis from of Imagery usage by country showing a concentration in some countries from Asia and Africa.

Synthetic view of changesets and by Objects edited, 2022

I wanted to react rapidly and present a synthetic view. My excuses if any inconsistancy in resuls. The data I have on hand was extracted from the OSM Planet changeset file ending in 2022 using my own version of changesetMD. Analysis for 2022 is grouped by Continent / Sub-Continent where I divide Asia and America for North and South (South-Asia + Oceania).

The tags variable in the file provides the source and imagery_used keys, both with references to imagery used as source. And you can have sometimes simultaneous references to many images (example: Maxar, Bing, Esri). This can come from JOSM which presents us with a list of all the imageries opened in our session or is simply the fact that the contributor indicates that he used more then one image provider.

What I present is also a brief analysis where I classiy sources as :

1. Maxar
2. Other Major Imageries (Bing, Esri, MapBox)
3. Others (all other sources - hard to classify rapidly)
4. Noref (no source indicated).

Previous analysis were based on the comparison of the number of Changesets by country. I do present results for both Changesets and Objects Edited (ie. no of Nodes, ways, relations edited). The variable num_changes (no. of Objects Edited) better represents the intensity of mapping. A changeset can contain only one building (5 objects edited) or thousand of objects edited.

Analysis by changesets

For 2022, the OSM contributors created 15 million edit changesets, 17.9% with a Maxar only reference, 31.2% with reference to other Major Images, and 2% with reference to both Maxar and other Major imageries. The majors represented 51.1% of changeset sources for 2022. In comparison, there were 1.3 billion objects edited, 28% with a Maxar only reference, 34.4% with reference to other Major Images, and 4.9% with reference to both Maxar and other Major imageries. The majors represented 67.3% of Objects edited sources for 2022.

Analysis by Objects edited

As previously observed, comparison by Continents shows a higher percentage of Maxar usage in some continents. Analysis by objects edited shows that Maxar only represents 55.5% in Africa, 50.6% in South-America (this excludes Mexico added to North-America) and 50.5% in South-Asia / Oceania. In North-America, other Major imagery providers are refered for 58.8% of objects edited. Would this mean that they revised more rapidly images of North-America using Maxar Data. By contrast, in Europe the Other imageries represent 55.8% of Objects edited references (probably more availibily of other public imageries).

Tables

Table 1: OpenStreetMap Changesets, 2022

Source / Imagery references	nd	south asia / oceania	north asia	africa	europe	south america	north america	Total
majors	25,317	789,284	248,436	387,689	1,498,610	338,265	1,423,775	4,711,376
maxar	11,178	927,990	173,475	673,051	282,135	559,559	79,201	2,706,589
maxar and majors	1,105	110,931	17,893	27,770	61,144	36,356	52,769	307,968
others	23,413	310,361	161,239	156,219	4,946,249	118,579	404,810	6,120,870
noref	42,588	168,221	61,945	45,306	759,435	63,760	122,422	1,263,677
TOTAL	103,601	2,306,787	662,988	1,290,035	7,547,573	1,116,519	2,082,977	15,110,480
majors	24,4 %	34,2 %	37,5 %	30,1 %	19,9 %	30,3 %	68,4 %	31,2 %
maxar	10,8 %	40,2 %	26,2 %	52,2 %	3,7 %	50,1 %	3,8 %	17,9 %
maxar and majors	1,1 %	4,8 %	2,7 %	2,2 %	0,8 %	3,3 %	2,5 %	2,0 %
others	22,6 %	13,5 %	24,3 %	12,1 %	65,5 %	10,6 %	19,4 %	40,5 %
noref	41,1 %	7,3 %	9,3 %	3,5 %	10,1 %	5,7 %	5,9 %	8,4 %
TOTAL	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %
Changesets : count of rows from Changeset file

Table 2: OpenStreetMap Objects edited (nodes + ways + relations), 2022

Source / Imagery references	nd	south asia / oceania	north asia	africa	europe	south america	north america	Total
majors	246,933	55,698,666	41,307,960	64,644,325	109,001,935	27,089,932	143,856,608	441,846,359
maxar	316,645	97,789,257	47,042,080	126,467,184	31,220,099	49,909,048	7,465,196	360,209,509
maxar and majors	129,679	16,119,891	7,960,065	9,740,725	11,574,609	9,131,001	8,648,204	63,304,174
others	559,559	11,722,100	18,756,406	22,407,195	221,156,231	9,306,103	68,468,511	352,376,105
noref	874,072	12,121,020	7,082,760	4,565,216	23,505,369	3,283,832	16,971,905	68,404,174
TOTAL	2,126,888	193,450,934	122,149,271	227,824,645	396,458,243	98,719,916	245,410,424	1,286,140,321
majors	11,6 %	28,8 %	33,8 %	28,4 %	27,5 %	27,4 %	58,6 %	34,4 %
maxar	14,9 %	50,5 %	38,5 %	55,5 %	7,9 %	50,6 %	3,0 %	28,0 %
maxar and majors	6,1 %	8,3 %	6,5 %	4,3 %	2,9 %	9,2 %	3,5 %	4,9 %
others	26,3 %	6,1 %	15,4 %	9,8 %	55,8 %	9,4 %	27,9 %	27,4 %
noref	41,1 %	6,3 %	5,8 %	2,0 %	5,9 %	3,3 %	6,9 %	5,3 %
TOTAL	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %	100 %
Objects edited : variable num_changes from Changeset file