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

[Jorge Gustavo]

Hi Mayeul,

Very nice work indeed.

But I agree with Frederik, and I would not recommend to upload anything.
The key difference between OSM and other maps is the local knowledge of 
the mappers. Info in the OSM should be provided by the ones who really 
knows that place. That's why it is (or will be better than any other map 
:-) I agree with imports related to non physical things, like 
administrative boundaries, etc.

But you can contribute by calculating, for example, the OSM building 
coverage in some countries or cities, and then let the community knows 
how bad/good is the current OSM coverage. Ex:
Berlin        80%
Geneve    60%
Milan        45%
etc

These indicators can be used to motivate the community and to help to 
evaluate the OSM (building) coverage.

Regards,

Jorge

P.S.
I can also take advantage of your work, if you are willing to share the 
results, since I'm personally interested in 3D models (and I could use 
your polygons in research projects). Let me know if you are interested 
in some research collaboration.

On 18-07-2011 18:17, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> 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
>