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

[Jaak Laineste]

Hello,

  I agree also here - you should import as little as possible, and even better if never.

  But I have more general question here - is there a good enough repository for this kind of data sources? I have put some datasets as prepared .osm files to our ftp/website, but these tend to get outdated there before anyone really finds them. A central OSM file storage would be maybe too much (with online converter from shape to osm), but at least meta-directory would be nice, so this could be integrated to P2 and JOSM? In principle something there is GPS track database.

 Btw, I have tried the vector layer feature of P2, but for my (a bit larger/country-wide) datasets it did not work. I guess here you have also several MB files , not just couple of lines, so you need to break up the dataset to smaller regions or thematic "layers". I have also done conversion to .osm files with appropriate tagging before sharing the files, and used JOSM to copy&merge objects individually.

Jaak

On 19.07.2011, at 0:06, Jorge Gustavo wrote:

> 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
>> 
> 
> 
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