Exploring OpenStreetMap to collect volunteered geographic information on the occurrence of road accidents

Road accidents are one of the events that have caused the most loss of life in recent years compared to accidents such as floods, earthquakes, etc. in our country. Currently, we are witnessing the death or injury of some people in these accidents every day. Various factors are involved in these accidents, one of which is the insecurity of the roads and the existence of problems in them. In this regard, if complete information about unsafe and accident-prone roads is available and necessary and sufficient measures are taken to fix the problems, the number of accidents will definitely decrease; Therefore, collecting accident data and other information related to the points that are prone to accidents is a very important to reduce accidents and improve road safety. One of the ways to obtain comprehensive and up-to-date information is to use Volunteered Geospatial Data (VGI). Based on this method, people provide the system with their data collected for a specific purpose. After VGI has been collected, sharing this data requires a system in the form of a web-based application so that users can share information about incidents or hazards on the road. OSM is one of the appropriate and cost-effective geo-web portals for planning in times of crisis. Therefore, in this research, OSM was investigated and used along with VGI to investigate the occurrence of accidents in Iran. In this research, the functionality of the OSM in terms of geographic data regarding accidents and unsafe roads has been investigated. Four spatial data recording methods were examined and finally the Editing with iD method was evaluated as more effective. The obtained results show the efficiency of OSM in registering voluntary geographic information related to accidents.