I made a plot of the OSM Data Density and find it interesting to see how population density and data density of the planet mismatch. Maybe someone finds it interesting as well, that’s why I thought it might be worth to share.
Trivial projection on a square with 16,384 × 16,384 Pixels, mapped to a color gradient.
Very cool!
I think the “random” squares in Africa are interesting, results of organized editing activities by UNGSC for example.
7.913408°, 16.958487°
Converted to geotiff using
gdal_translate -of GTiff -a_srs EPSG:4326 -a_ullr -180 90 180 -90 -co TILED=YES -co COMPRESS=DEFLATE -co PREDICTOR=2 OSM_Planet_Data_Density.png out.tif
I presume areas where Canvec data has been imported already.
I’m wondering, that it would be nice to actually cross these population density data with the planet, and create a map that shows areas where more data than expected is found, and where less data than expected is found
Yep, except I’d like to add, we’re not exclusively mapping population, we map natural features as well
So what I’d expect from a fairly complete map is a baseline fairly evenly distributed across the world representing natural features, and then more information in areas of more population
Nice!
It would be interesting also to see a separate density map for “non natural features”. I once had the (probably naive) idea, that this kind of density data could be used for map styles: in rural or poorly mapped areas, there would be less “non natural density”. There, some things (POIs, paths) could be shown more prominent (earlier/stronger) than the same things in a densely mapped city.
Is it? I would think on a more local view it’s kind of matching. Of course if you consider natural feature imports. Clearly you can spot the popolation density in Japan. Same in China and Europe looks also not that much off. Also in the US you can spot the big cities easily and Australia as well. Canada looks off, but that only due to import of natural features.
