[Talk-ca] Importing buildings in Canada

Sat Jan 4 15:09:19 UTC 2020

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for all the work you've put into this. I'd like to offer a 
couple suggestions and/or clarifications for your proposed import 
process, overview though it is.

First, I think it is very important that a tasking manager is set up on 
a city/by city basis only, and that only AFTER consensus is achieved 
that the import should proceed in that area. I would really like to 
avoid seeing the massive nationwide tasking that was set up the first 
time around. We should be making it hard for people to go rogue in 
regions where consensus for an import doesn't (yet) exist.

Related to this, though important enough to be a second point in it's 
own right, the tasking squares need to be small enough that a single 
user can manage them and inspect every single building in a task. The 
first round of import used task squares that were massive, and which 
couldn't be divided any further past a certain point. Even in rural 
areas, it is likely inappropriate to import areas larger than 1km^2. In 
central Toronto it would be (and was) idiotic. An import that doesn't 
take local scale into account shouldn't proceed. "Too big to load into 
JOSM" is about 100x too big to import in my opinion and is not a good 
enough benchmark for import batch sizing.

That is, each import needs to be local, and not just in a superficial 
sense.

I'll also add that the issue of conflation doesn't seem to have been 
worked out yet except to note that it is an issue. What will we do with 
the millions of buildings which will substantially overlap/duplicate 
existing buildings or imports? This needs to be worked out in detail 
before anything starts up again.

And what needs to be done about already existing low quality imports? 
It's good to acknowledge their existence, but what will be done about 
them? We've set up a task to clean up some of the mess in Toronto ( 
http://tasks.osmcanada.ca/project/168 ) but this is only the tip of the 
iceberg.

Again, I thank everyone for their time and effort on this - we can get 
this done if we go slow and do it right :-)

Best,

Nate Wessel, PhD
Planner, Cartographer, Transport Nerd
NateWessel.com <https://www.natewessel.com>

On 2020-01-03 3:40 p.m., Daniel @jfd553 wrote:
>
> Bonjour groupe, mes excuses pour ce très long courriel !-)
>
> I have reviewed everything that has been written on the ODB import 
> (aka Canada Building Import) in Talk-ca and the wiki. I proposed 
> changes to some wiki pages (via talk tabs) to ease the discussions 
> about this import and the following. Now, in order to restart the 
> import, here are some thoughts and a proposal on how to proceed to 
> complete the task.
>
> *1. Issues with the ODB Data Import*
>
> Many concerns were raised about the import. One major concern was to 
> obtain local communities’ buy-in in the Canadian context. Another 
> concern was to improve the quality of the data prior the import. The 
> following paragraphs intend to clear most of these concerns.
>
> *1.1. Which data import project?*
>
> According to the import guidelines (steps 3 & 4), a data import 
> explicitly refers to a single data source (ODB in our case). 
> Discussions about the availability and quality of Microsoft or ESRI 
> data, while interesting, are not relevant as they should be dealt with 
> as other import projects.
>
> *1.2. What has been imported so far?*
>
> According to what I found [1], the ODB import is completed for 21 
> municipalities. These imports seem to have kept OSM content’s history, 
> at least for the samples checked, but many problems were found. In 
> some case, the imports brought swimming pools in OSM because they were 
> included in the dataset (e.g. Moncton). In other cases, importing 
> buildings with accurate locations (XY) over content mapped from less 
> accurate imagery resulted in buildings that now overlap the street 
> network (e.g. Squamish). It means that all these 21 imports need to be 
> carefully re-examined and corrected as required.
>
> For 12 other municipalities, the import is partial, either suspended 
> as requested, or because previous imports had already provided most of 
> the buildings (often from the same municipal provider). That said the 
> import will definitely improve OSM accuracy and completeness if done 
> properly.
>
> *2. How should ODB Data be imported?*
>
> I will copy the following paragraphs in the “Canada Building Import” 
> wiki page [3] for a detailed discussion…
>
> Since the data (ODB, OSM and imagery) differ from one municipality to 
> another, there can be no imports at the national or provincial level. 
> We have to work on a municipal basis and make sure to identify all the 
> problems and the corrective measures to apply when dealing with issues 
> like those I identified [1].
>
> *2.1 Importing Locally*
>
> According to the import guidelines (step 2), we must not import the 
> data without local buy-in. However, and contrarily to some European 
> country, there is usually no such thing as a local OSM community in 
> each municipality. However, we may find a few local mappers from time 
> to time. Working on a municipal basis should allow identifying these 
> local mappers before doing the import. I often use this tool [2] to 
> identify and contact local mappers. Once identified, I suggest that…
>
> - We contact them to explain our intents by referring to appropriate 
> wiki pages.
>
> - We wait a week or two to let them respond nothing, that they have 
> concerns, or wish to help.
>
> - Without negative answers we could proceed to the import.
>
> I first suggest that when a contributor wishes to import ODB for a 
> given municipality, he first identifies himself as responsible for the 
> import (we need to create an entry for each municipality somewhere in 
> the wiki). He can then contact local mappers, as explain above, and go 
> ahead with the import once everything settled. For those who already 
> made the import, I suggest that they review their work since many 
> issues were detected with some of these imports.
>
> Since there are only a few local OSM communities in Canada, and 
> because Canada is large, I suggest not limiting the import of a given 
> municipality to the people of the concerned province or region.
>
> *2.2 Pre-processing*
>
> Once local mappers have agreed, some pre-processing can be done if 
> required.
>
> A few months ago, I developed a tool that could be used to process the 
> data [4]. Concerns were raised because the application was developed 
> using proprietary software. So I documented the whole process and 
> algorithms in order to see courageous coders converting it in open 
> source software. In the meantime, and as long as I have access to an 
> FME licence, I could process the data, when necessary, prior to make 
> it available through the task manager.
>
> Proposed pre-processing [4] includes:
>
> - Reading of original ODB data,
>
> - Removal of near collinear nodes (simplification),
>
> - Orthogonalization of buildings (for corners having near right angles),
>
> - Tagging of building footprints,
>
> - Providing files in OSM format.
>
> /Proposed tagging:/ In addition to the tags produced by the 
> orthogonalization process [4] and the source tag (source 
> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:source>=Statistics Canada - 
> Open Building Database), the name of the Census Subdivision provided 
> in ODB data [5] is used to add the addr:city tag to each building.
>
> The pre-processing requires parameters that are specific to the data 
> to process. These parameters were estimated on a municipal basis using 
> actual ODB data. The processing time increases exponentially according 
> to the number of buildings so, it may take a couple of days before the 
> data is available for a given municipality. Currently, the proposed 
> pre-processing does not convert terrace buildings into individual 
> houses nor it tags topological errors.
>
> *2.3. Import Process*
>
> After the local mappers, if any, agreed to the import, the 
> pre-processing completed when required, we can proceed to the import.
>
> 1- Do not bulk import the data! Always use the task manager 
> (http://tasks.osmcanada.ca/). Select and open a task square in JOSM. 
> If it’s too big (e.g. too much work or request is too big to load in 
> JOSM), go back to the task manager and split the task into smaller 
> squares.
>
> 2- Load imagery layer (Bing or ESRI World Imagery) and align the 
> imagery with ODB data (i.e. create a new image offset) if necessary 
> because, unless proven otherwise, ODB should be more accurate (XY) 
> than most available images especially in hilly areas.
>
> 3- Align the existing OSM content to the image (i.e. after the new 
> offset is applied) if required.
>
> 4- Currently step 2 and following as described in the wiki [2]. I 
> suggest merging the Conflation section [6] here and reviewing 
> everything to take into account the current proposal.
>
> *References*
>
> [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/The_Open_Database_of_Buildings__
>
> [2] 
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canada_Building_Import#Import_process
>
> [3] http://resultmaps.neis-one.org(“Overview of OpenStreetMap 
> Contributors aka who’s around me?”)
>
> [4] https://github.com/jfd553/OrthogonalizingBuildingFootprint__
>
> [5] 
> https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/92-195-x/2011001/geo/csd-sdr/csd-sdr-eng.htm
>
> [6] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canada_Building_Import#Conflation
>
> Let’s move ahead!
>
> Daniel
>
>
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