OpenStreetMap
Contributing commercial vehicle GPS traces from Kerala — a routing approach
Posted by Arjun kp on 14 May 2026 in English.Contributing commercial vehicle GPS traces from Kerala — a routing approach
I’ve been working on a method to convert commercial vehicle telematics data into useful GPX traces for OSM contribution in Kerala.
The problem
Telematics data is segment-based — each record has a start coordinate, end coordinate, timestamp and distance, but no continuous GPS track in between. Uploading these directly produces straight lines which aren’t useful for mapping.
The solution
I set up a local OSRM instance using the Kerala road extract from Geofabrik, then route-matched each segment to the actual road network. This produces GPX traces with thousands of road-following points instead of straight lines.
Results
From two months of data covering Thrissur, Irinjalakuda, Chalakudy, Kodungallur and surrounding areas:
- 141 road-snapped segments uploaded as GPX traces
- 19 high-priority segments flagged as possible unmapped roads
- These will be cross-checked against aerial imagery in JOSM
Next steps
Reviewing the unmapped road candidates in JOSM against Bing aerial imagery. More vehicle data from the same region will be processed and contributed regularly.
If anyone in the Kerala OSM community has experience with similar data or wants to collaborate on reviewing unmapped road candidates, feel free to reach out.
Tools used: Python, OSRM (self-hosted), gpxpy
Discussion
Comment from DennisL on 15 May 2026 at 12:22
Nice work. Glad to see OSRM’s map matching to be of help.
Comment from MatthiasMatthias on 17 May 2026 at 05:33
That sounds exciting. Can I see the results somewhere (changeset links or alike)?
Comment from Arjun kp on 20 May 2026 at 16:13
Hi, @MatthiasMatthias, I had made no changeset yet, the traces has been uploaded, you can view those under my profile
Comment from BaboucheVerte on 24 May 2026 at 15:02
Hi Arnun, your work might interest Delhivery : https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/best-way-to-contribute-inferred-roads-from-delivery-traces/143767/4
Comment from muzirian on 25 May 2026 at 05:19
hey arjun, maybe i can help check missing roads
Comment from chris_debian on 25 May 2026 at 15:54
Hi Arjun,
Really interesting approach. Using OSRM to route-match segment-based telematics data is an elegant solution to what is otherwise a frustrating data quality problem. The 19 unmapped road candidates from just two months of data shows how much potential there is in this kind of pipeline.
I am curious whether you see this scaling beyond Kerala. Commercial vehicle telematics is a global dataset; logistics operators, bus fleets, and freight companies exist everywhere, and many regions have the same gap between what is in OSM and what vehicles are actually driving. A replicable, documented workflow (your Python, OSRM and gpxpy stack sounds like a good basis) could be valuable for OSM communities in other countries, particularly where aerial imagery is sparse or outdated.
Have you thought about packaging this up as a reproducible tool or writing it up more formally? Publishing it on Codeberg or GitHub with a good README and some example data would make it easy for other OSM communities to pick up and adapt. It feels like the kind of thing that could get traction well beyond Kerala.
One thing worth considering as the pipeline scales is privacy. Even anonymised commercial vehicle traces can potentially reveal driver behaviour, working patterns, or commercially sensitive routes. It may be worth documenting the consent chain from the telematics provider through to OSM contribution, and noting any anonymisation steps taken, such as stripping timestamps before upload. This would also strengthen the case for wider adoption.
Great work, and good luck with the JOSM review of the unmapped candidates.
Chris