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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

#31

Post by reaperducer »

tomarr wrote: post #8
rcdmd wrote: 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)

laser scanning (by EPA or equivalent)

Why would the EPA laser scan buildings?

The EPA handles clean air and water.

The only entities that have any business laser scanning any building are the county tax assessor and the insurance companies.

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

#32

Post by king_magic »

robohamburger wrote: post #24
mark_edward wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to say that, but in practice it's not true and hasn't been for over a century.

I know building permits do seem to work like this in the US. There is probably a separate db (if its even a db) for each county. It is very much a data cleaning nightmare from my limited experience.

Way more granular than at the county level. Building permits in my village at at the village level. Dozens of villages in my county.

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

#33

Post by rz2k »

mark_edward wrote: post #21
cabaalis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People like to say that, but in practice it's not true and hasn't been for over a century.

Take a look at the US Census Bureau's methodology page for the Building Permits Survey.[1] They statistically impute the numbers from a subset of 20,100 building permit issuing authorities, because they cannot collect all of the distinct authorities in the country with different data collection and storage policies.

Federal databases of postal addresses don't really have any reason to maintain data on the structures.

Some fire fighting authorities have building layouts for recently built buildings. They may all have their own methods for storing the data, and the coverage is confusing enough that the bodies and budget authorities responsible for fighting any long lasting wild fire frequently change.

Properties lines are usually recorded and maintained at the county level, and enforced by a county court and sheriff at their direction, but this too is not the case everywhere.

It is not outlandish to think that there are multiple federal databases that include all of the data on buildings in the US, whether at the Department of Defense, or at multiple agencies within the Department of Homeland Security. However, it seems common that only data collected as a side effect of the regular course of doing government business are released to the public, but data sets created as part of some form of security-related goals are not released to the public.

[1] https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/how_the_data_are_col...

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

#34

Post by oeh34thoens »

reaperducer wrote: post #30
endorphone wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be trivial. It should be standardized. It is absolutely bizarre that we need to rely upon commercial companies to map things like streets and buildings when this is very accurately tracked by government. In an ideal world OSM data grids could be delegated to the appropriate governments, where it could have perfect precision with changes, street closures, one ways, redirects, etc.

It should be trivial. It should be standardized. Your use of the word "trivial" indicates you've never worked on complex GIS systems. Whether it should be standardized is a matter of debate. Currently, each county or state or municipality uses the software and standard that suits its needs, and more importantly -- it's budget. The GIS needs of New York City are not the same as the GIS needs of Saint George, Utah. Sai…

Likewise, New York probably doesn't have the nuclear contamination that St. George, Utah does[0]!

[0] " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._George%2C_Utah#Nuclear_con...

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

#35

Post by deklerk »

ebikelaw wrote: post #25
doikor wrote: 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…

There are Finland-sized entities within the USA that also do this. For example Los Angeles County, twice as large as Finland. When you are pondering the question of why all USA is not as integrated as Finland, ask yourself also why Finland is not tightly integrated with Croatia. It is the same reason.

> For example Los Angeles County, twice as large as Finland.

Uhh. You're off by two orders of magnitude. Los Angeles county is 4751 sq mi [1]. Finland is 130,666 sq mi [2].

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_Californ...

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland

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

#36

Post by et2o »

deklerk wrote: post #35
ebikelaw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are Finland-sized entities within the USA that also do this. For example Los Angeles County, twice as large as Finland. When you are pondering the question of why all USA is not as integrated as Finland, ask yourself also why Finland is not tightly integrated with Croatia. It is the same reason.

> For example Los Angeles County, twice as large as Finland. Uhh. You're off by two orders of magnitude. Los Angeles county is 4751 sq mi [1]. Finland is 130,666 sq mi [2]. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_Californ... 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland

He or she meant by population I would assume. Approximately 5 vs. 10 million.

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

#37

Post by davidmurdoch »

This is pretty great! This data is usually locked up in individual scraper-unfriendly county websites, sometimes behind a paywall, sometimes only by person, or even only by mail. And the data is often limited to parcel geometry, not building footprints.

The other option is to use 3rd party services to purchase or lease the data. This data can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for the entire US dataset.

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

#38

Post by bbeonx »

et2o wrote: post #36
deklerk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example Los Angeles County, twice as large as Finland. Uhh. You're off by two orders of magnitude. Los Angeles county is 4751 sq mi [1]. Finland is 130,666 sq mi [2]. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_Californ... 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland

He or she meant by population I would assume. Approximately 5 vs. 10 million.

Right. If one interpretation is wildly wrong and there is another blindingly obvious interpretation that is correct and relevant... Why would we ever give someone the benefit of the doubt?

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

#39

Post by chris_wot »

rmc wrote: 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.

Now this is the sort of way of handling competition I can deal with. Find the data they have locked up and that you don't compete on, but that you need to produce and collect anyway and then release it for anyone to use.

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

#40

Post by cup-of-tea »

doikor wrote: 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 US government doesn't necessarily hold data with this level of detail. If they did it would be (in theory) in the public domain anyway. Remember the difference in size between the US and European countries.

As for why other governments even have to "release" such information, it's historical and surprisingly hard to change. The UK government holds possibly the most detailed map in the world covering every inch of Britain. But after 2000 when GIS based products started to take off people discovered that none of this data was available to use. OSM was created specifically to give the UK some open geographical data because there simply wasn't any and campaigns to the government were taking too long (the government data still isn't fully open).

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