[Osmf-talk] Notes & Bing Imagery

[Oleksiy Muzalyev]

I am not against your proposal, but I would like to mention that Bing 
imagery is often outdated, for years. At least in Eastern Europe. 
Sometimes there is a large edifice on the ground and a green field in Bing.

Speaking of imagery, - the drone eBee 
https://www.sensefly.com/drones/ebee.html is capable of producing 10 
square kilometers of orthorectified ( 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthophoto ) imagery during a single 45 min 
flight. This aerial imagery is suitable for mapping, and even of better 
quality than  satellite imagery.

The area of, say, London is about 1000 sqkm, so we need just 100 flights 
to cover it. It is imaginable to make five flights during a weekend. So 
just one such aircraft can produce the orthrectified imagery of a large 
city just in several months. Besides such imagery could be constantly 
updated.

The drone is small, light and quiet, it is barely visible after takeoff, 
and that is important for flying in a city. Still it is an automated 
robust aircraft.

The company SenseFly is part of the Parrot group. I own Parrot Ar.Drone 
2.0. It was a good aircraft for its time, it can produce aerial imagery, 
but unfortunately it is not orthorectified, i.e. it cannot be used as a 
layer in JOSM.

I plan to buy eBee drone, and I wrote to SenseFly already, asking them 
for price. I can imagine the system is expensive, and they may deal 
mostly with companies and organizations. However, if buying a fleet as 
an organized group, as an organization, the price could be negotiated. 
Having a fleet and an organized group we can start to work on an 
experimental project of creating the new OSM Fleet Aerial Imagery Layer 
2014.

It takes time to become a good drone pilot, as it requires 3D 
orientation, what is not normally present in human life. So it would be 
a process in any case, not an immediate solution. Still up-to-date 
aerial orthorectified imagery seems to be becoming doable, but it will 
require a coordination and an organization. If the idea takes off, I am in.

brgds
O.M. (Alex-7)

On 03.12.2013 3:11, Dave Corley wrote:
>
> I've read through the Bing license and I'm not entirely sure if this 
> is against the license or not. I wonder has anyone from the board 
> asked Bing this question?
>