[Talk-ca] Building Canada 2020 initiative

john whelan jwhelan0112 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 29 13:24:50 UTC 2017


A couple of comments:

1. Pierre Beland <https://mobile.twitter.com/pierzen?p=s> has identified
95% of contributors only map 6% of the assets.
https://mobile.twitter.com/pierzen/status/910551645498552321  We would need
to use those 5% of mappers who do the most mapping and they have their own
agendas and reasons for mapping. They are more likely to throw their weight
behind something that looks achievable and I'm not sure this is.

2. I've put up a sample of buildings being mapped from a mapathon.
https://www.jatws.org/johnw/building3.jpg as you can see in my opinion the
quality is not suitable for Stats Canada's use.  Some buildings are grouped
together with others as a single building, others are mapped the wrong
shape or size.  Quite often buildings are omitted.  There are better
examples and there are worse examples but it is not untypical and it was
this experience that made me suggest the Open Data import route in the
first place.

So Open Data import is better for quality.  Adding tags to building foot
prints is less error prone.

3. There are more than 5,000 municipal governments in Canada source Stats
Can.  It took five years to get the City of Ottawa to update their Open
Data license.  Treasury Board still hasn't released their Open Data tool
kit for the municipalities.  With good will I estimate it will take two
years to get the Open Data licenses amended.  Kingston might be a good
target.  With any questions and there will be a number, this figure can be
expected to drift out to three to four years.  Who is responsible to answer
questions, in both official languages?  Who will make the requests to
municipal governments to adopt a usable Open Data license?

In Ottawa we had the right mix of resources.  We had enough local mappers
to discuss things through which is part of the import process. We had good
will from the City of Ottawa and they were happy to release building foot
print data which had not been part of their Open Data so far.  The import
process is not simple these days, it would need  the steps to follow to be
documented and then you get the technical side of the import.  I'm a fairly
experienced mapper and to be honest I wouldn't attempt the sort of complex
import that was done in Ottawa.  I'm not sure the Ottawa experience is
repeatable more than five thousand times.

We can approach the OSM LWG for an opinion on existing licenses but they
are volunteers and for five thousand opinions that would take a
considerable amount of time and if the license weren't the TB toolkit ones
I wouldn't even bother.

The community is supposed to be doing this.  Fine but a project manager and
a project plan might make it run more smoothly.  Data quality will be
important so how will it be verified?  Who will be responsible for
organising task manager tiles for the whole country? Who will identify the
group of mappers who are "local" to a small municipality?  Remember these
have a critical decision making role to play in the import process.

Have fun.

Cheerio John


On 28 September 2017 at 16:48, Alasia, Alessandro (STATCAN) <
alessandro.alasia at canada.ca> wrote:

> Hello all!
>
> Statistics Canada was a partner of the 2017 HOT Summit held in Ottawa,
> Sept 14-15. In parallel to the summit, Statistics Canada hosted a workshop
> to discuss the possibility of launching a community-led initiative titled
> “Building Canada 2020”.
>
> The goal and vision of this initiative is simple: *map all buildings in
> Canada on OSM by the year 2020*. The workshop was well attended. There
> were about 50 people from various sectors (federal, academic, civic group,
> and private). This was a preliminary discussion amongst a small group of
> people, but now that broad interest has been confirmed more stakeholders
> need to be involved!
>
> A short summary of the workshop along with a first draft *Roadmap to
> implementation* has been posted on the OSM Wiki at:
> *https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Canada/Building_Canada_2020*
> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Canada/Building_Canada_2020>
>
> Everyone that shares the vision of “mapping all buildings in Canada on OSM
> by the year 2020” is invited to contribute to the discussion and the
> roadmap to implementation. In addition, there is still need to discuss how
> coordination, communication and governance of this initiative can be set in
> place.
>
> One important aspect that needs to be emphasized is that “Building Canada
> 2020” is not a Statistics Canada project. In fact, it is not properly a
> project of any sort. It is a vision and an aspirational goal. The hope is
> that many organizations and contributors working with an open data resource
> (OSM) can coordinate their efforts through a multitude of projects,
> initiatives, and activities towards a common goal that would benefit
> society at large.
>
> My team at Statistics Canada (DEIL) has been working on a pilot project
> with OSM (which was presented at the HOT Summit). We are looking at the
> possibility of a second Statistics Canada project to expand to other cities
> the work done with the pilot in Ottawa and Gatineau. If this happens, this
> StatCan project would contribute to, and align with, the Building Canada
> 2020 initiative. Hopefully this will be but one of many projects and
> activities contributing to the vision. Where possible, we would be happy to
> coordinate work with other organizations or groups that share the vision.
> We would also be happy to share experiences and the tools developed while
> working with building information on OSM.
>
> We look forward to further collaboration with the OSM communities as we
> move forward with the second phase of our project and expand to more
> cities.
>
> Best regards
> Alessandro and DEIL Team
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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