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Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

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Re: Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

#11
post #5
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume anyone using this data is not thankful?

Because consumers of the data may not know.

I'm sure consumers doesn't know my input there too but I don't care much. I mean...what do you expect? A banner? Money?

Those who entered the data from their browser and directly used the bing data do know and I'm sure they appreciate it.

Re: Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

#12
post #6
post #3

I don't understand why this is needed. Here in Finland the government just gave this info out for free to anyone (CC 4.0). They have all the information anyway because they have need for it due to planning/building permits, defense, etc. The data is very accurate (for example I can zoom into my parents cottage and see the out house on it). Later on they used laser scanning from planes to scan the whole country for ve…

The USA is about 30x Finland's size by landarea and building data is primarily stored at the county or equivalent level of government (3000 of those). Imagine munging data from 3000 different counties, each with their own standards and systems of recording.

> primarily stored at the county or equivalent level

That's assuming there are any records at all. In states like Idaho and Montana, once you get out of the bigger cities I very much doubt there are permits on file for most dwellings. Partly because few people care, and partly because the land owners resent any sort of "big government" telling them what they can and cannot do.

Re: Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

#13
post #3

I don't understand why this is needed. Here in Finland the government just gave this info out for free to anyone (CC 4.0). They have all the information anyway because they have need for it due to planning/building permits, defense, etc. The data is very accurate (for example I can zoom into my parents cottage and see the out house on it). Later on they used laser scanning from planes to scan the whole country for ve…

Local government rules much of the US which makes national data sets difficult to assemble. There are excellent topographic resources though:

https://nationalmap.gov/

Re: Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

#14
post #3

I don't understand why this is needed. Here in Finland the government just gave this info out for free to anyone (CC 4.0). They have all the information anyway because they have need for it due to planning/building permits, defense, etc. The data is very accurate (for example I can zoom into my parents cottage and see the out house on it). Later on they used laser scanning from planes to scan the whole country for ve…

That's great for Finland! That is a real asset to your country.

The rest of the world doesn't necessarily work the same way Finland does, unfortunately.

Re: Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

#15
post #4
post #2

Microsoft has allowed the OSM community to trace from Bing aerial imagery for almost 10 years now. That's been a massive benefit to OSM, way more than this dump of buildings. They should be congratulated and thanked for that contribution.

Why do you assume anyone using this data is not thankful?

There is no need for that assumption. This is just positive reinforcement. Maybe we see more of a good thing.

Re: Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

#17
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA is about 30x Finland's size by landarea and building data is primarily stored at the county or equivalent level of government (3000 of those). Imagine munging data from 3000 different counties, each with their own standards and systems of recording.

Where does this size argument arrive from because it comes up consistently on USA v elsewhere arguments? 95th percentile densities are no more than europe. The population of USA is more than 30x Finland and we are talking about laser scanning (by EPA or equivalent)

The United States is comprised of literally thousands of sovereign, independent governments. There are even independent limits on what rules these governments can impose upon each other. It is not a "subordinate" type of situation.

That's why the size argument comes into play so often. It's not really a landmass or even population argument as much as is it a complexity argument.

Re: Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

#18
post #3

I don't understand why this is needed. Here in Finland the government just gave this info out for free to anyone (CC 4.0). They have all the information anyway because they have need for it due to planning/building permits, defense, etc. The data is very accurate (for example I can zoom into my parents cottage and see the out house on it). Later on they used laser scanning from planes to scan the whole country for ve…

When the danish goverment did it some years back, they used the data to recreate the whole of denmark in minecraft [0].

[0]:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-05/to-teach-...

Re: Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

#19
If anyone is interested in that type of data, our startup (https://tensorflight.com) extracts information like footprints and 10 other property factors for insurance (including bing imagery). More info: https://tensorflight.com/catalogue#Objects-supported-by-Tens... .

Re: Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data

#20
>>The CNTK toolkit developed by Microsoft is open source and available on GitHub as well. The ResNet3 model is open source and available on GitHub. Our Bing Maps computer vision team will be presenting this work at the annual International State of the Map conference in Milan, Italy

Nice!

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