Issues and solutions using open street map: the case of secondary roads in Sicily

Abstract

An adequate road infrastructure system represents an essential and necessary condition to increase the productivity and competitiveness of a territory and to guarantee its development, especially with reference to the innermost areas. Continuous and huge financial investments are needed, the programming of which should be based on a clear knowledge and measurement of the road endowment up to the municipal level, which is not currently available. Open street map can represent a robust and reliable source of road equipment in a specific area on which public policies for the enhancement or safety of the road system intend to intervene. The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project since July 2004 has collected a huge amount of spatial data on a voluntary basis making it not perfectly standardized. Through an application to an Internal Area included in the National Strategy for Internal Areas (SNAI), the area of “Terre dei Sicani”, we have determined the road distances present in each single municipality of the Area and for each road category, proceeding to an appropriate standardization. Through the use of particular GIS methodologies, the application proposes the resolution of some redundancies and criticalities present in OSM, which in some cases attribute additional road sections to the correct categories, assigning each single stretch of road to each municipality of the Area on the basis of its administrative limits.