[Imports] Uganda Bureau of Statistics educational facilities import

[Christoph Hormann]

On Wednesday 30 December 2015, Jotam wrote:
>
> I wanted to reply to Christoph's objection about schools being hard
> to identify on aerial imagery. In fact, it is pretty easy to identify
> Ugandan schools on satellite pictures as almost all school grounds
> are set up to a very particular pattern and shape. This may sound
> improbable to Western ears. But Ugandans like to simply copy a once
> tried and tested concept. That's why almost all school compounds look
> alike.

You are right, this does sound unlikely w.r.t. a volume of 24k schools 
all over Uganda - not from a narrow minded western viewpoint but based 
on basic understanding of schooling practice all over the world and 
observation of currently mapped schools in Uganda:

http://mc.bbbike.org/mc/?lon=32.493016&lat=0.845208&zoom=17&num=3&mt0=mapbox-satellite&mt1=mapnik&mt2=google-satellite
http://mc.bbbike.org/mc/?lon=32.477664&lat=0.849601&zoom=17&num=3&mt0=mapbox-satellite&mt1=mapnik&mt2=google-satellite
http://mc.bbbike.org/mc/?lon=32.469376&lat=0.831407&zoom=17&num=3&mt0=mapbox-satellite&mt1=mapnik&mt2=google-satellite

The fact that you can recognize some schools in Uganda by common 
architectural elements (which by the way also applies to other parts of 
the world) does not change anything here - this might be helpful for 
remote mapping to identify some schools, it is not of any use for 
verifying separately acquired data.

Note i am not saying the data is bad and should not be imported but 
since it is not possible to verify it based on available imagery it 
would be necessary to see and demonstrate if the data is reliable 
before making plans for an import.

Currently the import documentation does not even contain the basic 
information that can be assessed without on-the-ground knowledge, like 
how many schools are currently mapped in OSM within the area of the 
import, how many are both in OSM and in the new data and how many are 
only in one of them and not in the other.  IMO this is a basic 
requirement for a useful import discussion.  On-the-ground assessment 
of the data in a few sample areas would be good to have in addition of 
course.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/