The challenges and prospect of OpenStreetMap in Bangladesh

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a world-wide campaign for developing open source maps. With the ever increase in the rate of cell phone usage, the necessity of location based services is increasing day by day and the prospect of such open source maps is very bright in commercial, educational and political points of views. Starting from the 3G mobile applications to cheap SMS-based services, we need maps everywhere. Various applications of digital maps are also seen in different national and international issues. Hence, OSM has been growing at a rapid pace in different parts of the world. However, it is a bit challenging task to develop this sort of voluntary efforts in the developing third world countries like Bangladesh. In this paper, we discuss the present conditions and initiatives taken for making OpenStreetMap a success in Bangladesh. Then we discuss about the various sectors that can be directly benefitted by the use of OSM in the context of developing countries like us and finally, we present the shortcomings and challenges that we face while developing OSM for this region. © 2011 IEEE.