In 2010, I first conducted a study which identified regions (places) in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project in Germany that still had potential for more detailed mapping. Later, in 2016, this analysis was repeated and extended to the entire world. I have since regularly carried out these studies and published the results. The algorithm and some more details are documented in an earlier blog post of mine.

For the year 2024, I have recalculated this analysis and published the results on my website: “Unmapped Places of OpenStreetMap”. For the study, the OSM Planet File in PBF format from Dec. 7th was used. It can be downloaded here.

Currently, there are about 8.6 million elements in the OpenStreetMap project that use the place-key, representing either the center or the outline of a named place. Approximately 1.5 million place nodes are registered as villages, defined as “A village/town with up to 10,000 inhabitants.”. More details about the place-keys can be found in the OSM wiki. Depending on which type of street is used as a filter in my search, there are currently at least 170,000 places (villages) in OSM that are unmapped.

How is the number distributed across continents? Currently, 67% of the unmapped places are in Asia, followed by 30% in Africa. The remaining approx. 3 percent are distributed across the rest of the world. The detailed figures:

• Asia: 113,895 (67%)
• Africa: 51,443 (30%)
• South America: 2,282
• Oceania: 804
• Europe: 637
• North America: 484
• Antarctica: 3

In the past the data from my studies have been used for MapRoulette, HOTOSM, MissingMaps, or similar mapathons or challenges. If anyone is interested in the individual layers of the visualization, they can be downloaded here directly as a JS file (track, minor, major). I would appreciate appropriate attribution if my data is used.