[Openstreetmap] Satellite cost/benefit

SteveC steve at fractalus.com
Sat Feb 19 14:40:35 GMT 2005


Hi everyone,

So I'm on the fence about it, but a few people have mentioned in person
that they think that buying satellite pictures and doing feature
extraction using $METHOD is a bit pointless, and I can see where
they're coming from.

The geo-coord archive is down, I was looking for figures but I seem to
remember 400UKP or so was being said. Maybe more, maybe less. Irrespective
of the amount I was thinking it'd be a good idea to do a cost benefit of
our methods. Sorry if someone has already, I couldn't find it.

When I say 'our' I really mean 'whoever wants to give money to further
the open geodata cause'.

First, whats the goal? Rufus mentioned (to paraphrase) 'getting
something up and running as a demo'. Thats as good as any, but I'd like
to look a bit further in to the future too.

Second, how do you sell the idea of giving money? Buying satellite data
is a sexy banner to call people to. Buying gps units for random people
isn't, but it might help more. I don't know.

I'll take a stab at some cost/benefits and try to remember what people
said:

satellite imagry
----------------

benefits: sexy. large number of streets, IF you can do the extraction.
Quick, IF you can do the extraction. We can use the image and data for
other things, maybe.

costs: 400UKP. unproven that it'd work well, need someone to look at doing
nonlinear transforms between an image to lat/lon

tertiary: its not very socially inclusive. One person goes and gets an
image, someone sits down and does GA extraction or maps streets on top.


buying gps units ( **for example**, I'm sure there are other things
possible)
--------------------------------------------------------------------

scenario: buy a load of gps units and give them to people without them,
on the basis that they 'do stuff' with them. I'm sure such people can be
found easily, who find a unit just over their price range.

benefits: long term usage, multiple uses, socially inclusive, gets lots
more people involved

costs: say 400UKP's worth of gps units off of eBay, or say the person pays
half the cost. would take a bit longer to get a 'demo' up.



using out of copyright data
---------------------------

benefits: free, easy to obtain

costs: out of date data


and so on.

In the end, it all comes down to who has the money and what they think
they should do with it. Other than buying gps units, what else could be
done with some amount of money? I've presented this as an either/or but
you can do some combination.

Comments? Ideas?

have fun,

SteveC steve at fractalus.com http://www.fractalus.com/steve/




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