Welcome to OSMTimeLapseR.

OSMTimeLapseR is an R package that helps you visualize the edits to OpenStreetMap (OSM) in various parts of the world. OSM is a volunteer-contributed map of the world (just like Wikipedia), and lots of people have spent a lot of time making the map in their communities better. OSMTimeLapseR helps them visualize and showcase that hard work.

It was originally built for visualizing the hard work of the OSM community in Kathmandu, Nepal, where contributions in OSM have totally exploded in 2012 and 2013. In addition to looking at how OSM has grown in Kathmandu below, we hope that you follow the Examples listed on the left-hand side of this page to create visualizations of growth in your own community!

A monthly visualization is here.

Create your own

Caveat: For those who are keeping track at home, we are visualizing only the last change on nodes that are not deleted on OSM. This turns out to be an okay representation of reality for Kathmandu, but you may want to check assumptions if you make visualizations for a different community..

Installation instructions

Credits