[OSM-talk] Why the HOT obsession with low quality buildings in Africa ?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 02.07.2018 10:24, Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:
> churning out buildings like demented stonemasons trying to reach their weekly quota
> of gamified task-managing !

I recently stumbled upon

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/-6.8958/39.1623

(Tanzania) and had a similar thought. The buildings there are at least
square and largely match aerial imagery, but this, too, looked like
supercharged one-trick-pony image tracing combined with very little on
the ground knowledge (e.g. quite a few roads and tracks clearly visible
on the imagery are not traced, and from someone local you'd expect the
occasional POI or label).

Someone must have buildings very high on their priority list (don't even
know if HOT are involved but it certainly doesn't look like local mapping).

It will be interesting to learn why buildings are so important. Or are
they just the lowest-hanging image tracing fruit, or just easier to count?

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"