[Imports] EC-JRC built-up areas / density of building from Bing

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Mon Jul 18 18:17:54 BST 2011


Hi,

Mayeul KAUFFMANN wrote:
> We would like to run our script on Bing data to upload the result to 
> OSM. We have built the technical capacity to run it on a global scale on 
> (very) high resolution satellite imagery. We would like to discuss with 
> the community the best way to upload the data

Be aware that there is no plain "uploading" to OSM. As you have already 
said, your data might conflict with existing data and you cannot just 
load it into OSM on a global scale. What you could do is provide your 
data as an extra data source - say, a shape file - and make it available 
to mappers who could then, with the help of e.g. Potlatch's Vector 
Background feature, copy individual, selected data objects from your 
dataset into OSM.

> On OSM, there are several tags that are related to our understanding of 
> density of building layer.
> Some of them are:
> density= (with categories or percentage)
> building:density:grade = (with numerical category)

Neither of those are widely used.

> In the wiki there for tagging settlements in a 0-30 scale (rank)
> according to importance.

These are also in very limited use, and the rank is not intended to 
imply a density but an importance.

The only thing that is really widely used in OSM is 
"landuse=residential", meaning this is a residential area. This is a 
yes/no thing; you cannot have a "50% residential" area, and we don't 
usually distinguish different grades of population density.

That's not saying that you couldn't add some kind of qualifier to 
landuse=residential as long as you remain within the usual bounds; for 
example, it would not be ok to tag an area which has one building per 
square kilometre as "landuse=residantial, density=1%" or so, because 
something so sparsely built up is not a residential area in our terms.

> We could build on those with some additional data or create similar tags
> to upload polygons to OSM.

As I said, I don't recommend that you upload anything; just make your 
data available for local mappers who want to use it to supplement their 
work. This means that your data will not land in OSM in areas where we 
have no mappers, but that's ok; it is never a good idea to have data 
without people to care for it.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"



More information about the Imports mailing list