[OSM-talk] AI detecting of buildings Idle thoughts

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 16 August 2018, Warin wrote:
>
> Satellite imagery is available for the world..
> But how much do you know of Africa?
> [...]

You maybe don't realize that but the kind of data garbage i pointed to 
is the direct result of projecting ideas and experiences of settlement 
structures of some part of the world onto a different one. We are 
mostly talking about scattered dwellings of what are probably mostly 
subsistence farmers here.  The pointless polygon geometry drawing is 
the failed attempt to regard those as a typical European/North American 
residential area.  

If this is due to a lack of knowledge about the actual geography or 
because of a misguided belief that making it crudely look a bit like an 
European/North American residential area is kind of beneficial for the 
people there i don't know.

Anyway we are drifting off-topic here and this does not really help the 
original question from John.  My answer to that would be:  Yes, 
automated methods can help to find unmapped settlements in OSM - less 
though in actually mapping them.

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