All
Does anyone know if there’s a way to see a historical view of Openstreetmap? ie, for a given area, can I see how it looked in OSM 6 months ago compared to how it looks now?
Cheers
Mike
OpenStreetMap
All
Does anyone know if there’s a way to see a historical view of Openstreetmap? ie, for a given area, can I see how it looked in OSM 6 months ago compared to how it looks now?
Cheers
Mike
Discussion
Comment from Jonathan Bennett on 12 March 2013 at 15:40
It’s possible, but not easy. You can download old planet files, but you’d have to extract the area you’re interested in, then render it, then compare it with what’s currently there.
Remember that you’d only be comparing what had been mapped then versus now – it’s not necessarily a record of how an area itself has changed.
Comment from stephan75 on 12 March 2013 at 19:05
Only found in the OSM wiki:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Historical_Coverage
But out of date?
Comment from Vincent de Phily on 13 March 2013 at 11:42
A further complication is that the rendering style changes, tags get deprecated and removed from renderer’s config, etc. So even with Jonathan’s hypothetical tool, you’d be rendering yesterday’s data with today’s style. Still, would be cool to have :)
That said, have a look at http://owl.apis.dev.openstreetmap.org/ : you’ll see recent changes in an area and can even see the old geometry by hovering your cursor over an item’s “back arrow” icon.
Comment from mapryan on 13 March 2013 at 12:00
Thanks guys. Obviously not as easy a question as I thought