May 20–22, 2021
Our second virtual conference was a celebration of the OpenStreetMap community with a road trip through open mapping in the United States.
Thank you for helping to make our second virtual conference a success!
This virtual event was a celebration of all things OpenStreetMap and our community. This year, we took a virtual road trip through OpenStreetMap across the United States. Friday talks were recorded and can be viewed on the OSM US YouTube page. We hope to make this an annual gathering that enables people from across the country to learn about OpenStreetMap and network with fellow mappers through a combination of curated and community-led dialog.
Program
We had three fun days packed with talks, workshops, hacking, mapping parties and networking all around OpenStreetMap. Find more detail about the event schedule on the Mapping USA Wiki page.
Thanks to our Mapping USA Sponsors!
Surfs Up Level

Hang Ten Level

Coastline Level
University of Arizona LibrariesAcknowledgements
OpenStreetMap US would like to thank the following for their support and participation in making this virtual event a reality:
- All of the volunteers of the Mapping USA Organizing Committee for planning this fantastic event - you are amazing!
- Critigen for donating the logo design.
- OSGeo US for the use of their Airmeet platform and continued support.
- All of our supporting attendees that made a donation when registering for the event - you rock!
We are grateful for your support!
Still Interested in Donating?
Your financial support helps keep events like Mapping USA free and accessible. Is your company interested in supporting OpenStreetMap US? Email us at connect@openstreetmap.us or donate here.
Recorded talks
Welcome to Mapping USA 2021!
Welcome session for Mapping USA (Spring 2021) with Executive Director, Maggie Cawley, and the OSM US Board: Minh Nguyễn, Jubal Harpster, Diane Fritz, Dani Waltersdorfer, & Martijn van Exel.
A Concise Introduction to the OpenStreetMap Project
For those who know nothing about OpenStreetMap, this five minute introduction will feature a brief history of OSM, how it works, and the significance & impact of the project worldwide.
10 Years of OpenStreetMap in the Classroom
In this lightning talk I’ll present the why, how and results of incorporating OSM in the curriculum of GIS classes at George Washington University. Introducing OSM into the GIS classes was part...
The Latest and Greatest from Mapillary
Mapillary is the platform that makes street-level images and map data available to scale and automate mapping. With nearly 1.5 billion images and waves of recent change, we have many new things...
Florida: State of the (Conservation) Map
Florida’s roads & cities are fairly well mapped, but the conservation lands, trails, forests, grasslands, scrubs, sandhills, & wetlands are generally sparse in OSM. From 1990-2008, Florida had one of the best...
Using high resolution topography to update OpenStreetMap
In the last 20 years there has been a tremendous growth in the use of lidar technology to develop surface models of the earth and vegetation. The State of Oregon has a...
The Daylight Map Distribution
The Daylight Map Distribution is the result of Facebook’s process to build an OSM dataset corrected for vandalism, profanity, and other harmful edits. We publish a planet PBF every 4 weeks to...
Using OpenStreetMap to Quantify Local Economic Disparity Resulting from Traditional Racial and Class Segregation
Lubbock Texas’s history of racial and class segregation has modern impacts. Texas Tech YouthMappers and a local NGO apply OSM to further quantify local inequality and disparity. We hosted a 3-day livestream...
Microcosms in OpenStreetMap
Microcosms supports the activities of local groups of volunteer mappers. Learn how it can support your team and help you create one.
Mapping USA's History on OpenHistoricalMap
We will showcase the progress of the OHM platform for use in historical mapping, focused on US history-related topics. We can talk about any scale of project or focus, with an emphasis...
Supporting and Engaging Community Groups and Contributors to Leverage OpenStreetMap Data and Tools for Positive Social Impact
We believe that an improved community is one which collaborates to achieve goals, and which fosters and supports the growth of other local groups around the world. In this lightning talk, we...
Welcoming New Mappers
Studies have found that welcoming new users to OpenStreetMap help improve retention. This talk will demo a website that allows anyone to welcome new US mappers. The demo tool tracks who has...
Fostering a Mapping Community in St. Louis
In March 2020, Harris-Stowe State University partnered with Maxar and other organizations local to St. Louis, to introduce students to careers in the geospatial industry. At our event, we focused on mapping...
Integrating OpenStreetMap into an undergraduate cartography curriculum
This talk provides a brief overview of introducing cartography students at Frostburg State University to OpenStreetMap since 2019. Attention is paid to rationale, initial lesson plans, student impressions, and future directions. A...
Road Quality Trends in the USA, 2018-2021
Critigen’s OSM team developed the Map Quality Measurement (MQM) process to rate and rank the quality of OSM data in cities throughout the USA. In 2019 we analyzed roads data for 51...
Mapping Community Connections: Hudson Valley Mappers' Work in Poughkeepsie
Hudson Valley Mappers (HVM) is a local chapter of YouthMappers, a project of the USAID GeoCenter. HVM is based at Vassar College, and most of our projects focus on mapping in our...
University Education and OpenStreetMap: Creating Service Learning Opportunities
OpenStreetMapping is easy and requires little GIS knowledge. This makes it the perfect tool to incorporate into classes. This presentation will examine OSM at California University of Pennsylvania (CalU) by describing the...
Mapping History in the Pacific Northwest
In this talk, I plan to talk about mapping history on OpenHistoricalMap where I have been working on mapping time within the northwest. I would also like to go over how to...
OpenStreetMap Standard Layer: Who's using it?
Mappers see the OpenStreetMap Standard layer every time they view OpenStreetMap.org, but who else is using the layer? With usage logs, who is accessing what is broken down for this important OpenStreetMap...
Maine: State of the State
An update on recent history, current status, active mappers and work in progress in the great state of Maine. There will be a focus on mistakes, lessons learned, and hopes and dreams....
The YouthMappers Network: Broad and Narrow Perspective
YouthMappers is an international network of 264 university-student-led chapters in 58 countries. We organize, collaborate, and implement mapping activities that respond to actual development needs around the globe - creating and using...
How Could OpenStreetMap Data Help City Agencies Manage Their Curb?
We always think of the curb as just the minute space that separates a road to a sidewalk, but what really is the curb? My talk will go over how the curb...
What's new on OSMCha?
The last months have been very active on the OSMCha development. This talk will show some main new features and what we have in mind for the future of OSMCha.
YouthMappers Validation Hub
Since 2014 YouthMappers has been teaching university aged students about OSM and generating lots of data. In 2019 YouthMappers formed the Validation Hub to address potential data issues with YouthMappers projects, provide...
Mapping Campus Bike Infrastructure with Students
Working with the campus sustainability office, I have been working on mapping campus bike and transportation infrastructure with university students using OSM. UW-Stout is a small university campus without a campus GIS...
2020 State of the States
A quick, data-driven overview of OpenStreetMap mapping activity in the United States throughout the year 2020.
News
Announcing Mapping USA! & Call for Participation
Mapping USA: Spring 2021 - Mark Your Calendars for May 20, 21 & 22! Sidewalks in New York, to art in California. Everybody loves mapping, Mapping USA! OpenStreetMap US is excited to...