[OSM-talk] AI detecting of buildings Idle thoughts

[Christoph Hormann]

> And we took the decision to use this info
> to spot rapidly the populated areas. «Take time» to look at these
> polygons one by one  (we did) and you will see that they reflect
> adequately the density of housing in these areas.

No, they don't (at least not for any meaningful definition of "density 
of housing").

In any case even if they did - iso-lines of some model of a building 
density field are quite fundamentally not something that is mappable in 
OSM, especially not with landuse=residential.

It seems i need to clarify one thing:  My harsh criticizm of the data 
imported (which i stand by firmly) is about the data.  I - just like 
probably everyone else here - am aware that clairedelune did not 
generate this data.  The kind of problem we see here is exactly the 
reason why we have import guidelines and why we need a directed editing 
policy so mappers do not get into a situation where they add bad data 
in larger volume because they follow - usually with good intentions - 
the unqualified instructions of others or wrongly believe the quality 
claims of data providers.

If the import plans had been properly discussed we could have had this 
discussion in advance and could have considered useful options - like 
for example the idea of impoting the buildings as Rory suggested.

I also want to make sure this example is not blown out of proportion.  
There are plenty of bad quality imports and bad mapping in OSM.  If you 
look at landuse=residential mapping in Eastern Africa this is not the 
worst data in the database, not by a large margin.  I just pointed it 
out here as an example because it was a perfect fit for the idea John 
brought up.

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