Changes to maps and related data

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Hello community,

I need your help with this topic.

For a few years, I’ve been using OSM data to build a road network (an ordered sequence of lines and arcs) for some cities, and now I’m running into a problem:

I compared two data downloads from different years (for example, March 2022 vs. March 2025) and noticed that some roads (or rather, the lines representing them) were shifted by a few centimeters.

I imagine these are refinements due to other changes, since that road has remained the same over the years.

However, I’m having a problem because the program I’m developing is based on the position of the elements, and if they shift for no reason (unmodified road), my program doesn’t work.

I’m wondering why these minor changes are there, and if it’s possible to identify them and restore me to the previous version.

Obviously, I can’t continue using the old network because I need to insert the new roads as they are built.

Thanks to anyone can help me.

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Sometimes roads (or other items) are entered roughly at first, and then adjusted later. This can happen when aerial imagery is updated with better resolution/accuracy. It’s fairly normal and should probably be considered when building applications…

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And while moving by few cm seems pointless at first thought it is impossible to say anything specific about given edit if we do not know where edit happened.

Likely this edit makes sense.

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