This talk investigates how indicators - such as types of edits, rate of edits, and number of contributors - vary spatially and temporally as OpenStreetMap gradually shifts from an initial exploration phase to an emphasis on maintenance and refinement tasks. In particular, I examine the changes in activity in areas that have experienced data imports or other bursts of intense editing activity, versus areas where the database has grown slowly over time.

OpenStreetMap’s 10th birthday offers an opportune moment to look back at some moments of rapid data entry into OpenStreetMap—such as the TIGER import of 2007 and 2008, the post earthquake humanitarian mapping in Haiti in 2010, and the imports of addresses and buildings in many cities in recent years—and to assess how well this data has been maintained in the years afterward. The empirical evidence offered by this research will help inform a long running debate within the OpenStreetMap user base: whether healthy, active, local editor communities are either helped or hindered by the presence of data imports.