RT Journal Article
T1 Using Metamorphic Testing to Improve the Quality of Tags in OpenStreetMap
A1 Almendros-Jimenez, Jesus M.
A1 Becerra-Teron, Antonio
A1 García Merayo, María De Las Mercedes
A1 Núñez García, Manuel
AB We present a metamorphic testing approach to validate the information included in OpenStreetMap, a collaborative effort to produce a free map of the world. We focus on the quality of the tags storing the information about the elements of the map. We identified metamorphic relations with the potential to detect different types of tagging errors. In particular, we carefully designed mechanisms to automatically generate follow-up inputs , a fundamental component in the successful application of a metamorphic testing approach. The intrinsic nature of automatically analysing tags implies that we will detect real errors but some false positives as well. In order to obtain a good trade-off between real errors and false positives, we introduce thresholds . Our MRs will raise an error associated with a certain value if, depending on the nature of the MR, we have a certain number of elements (not) fulfilling a given condition. In order to evaluate the goodness and versatility of our framework, we chose four cities in different continents with the goal of analysing very heterogeneous contributors adding information in different languages. The application of this framework to the analysis of the chosen cities revealed errors in all of them and in all the considered categories. In addition, around 66% of the errors found by our MRs in the analysed areas have not been previously reported by Osmose , the de facto standard OSM error checker.
PB IEEE
SN 0098-5589
SN 1939-3520
SN 2326-3881
YR 2022
FD 2022-03-07
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/119487
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/119487
LA eng
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
NO Comunidad de Madrid
NO European Commission
DS Docta Complutense
RD 18 dic 2025