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Map of all the buildings in the world

gizmodo.com

21–30 of 67 posts

Re: Map of all the buildings in the world

#21
post #4

Github: https://github.com/zhu-xlab/GlobalBuildingAtlas Viewer: https://tubvsig-so2sat-vm1.srv.mwn.de/ (might already be hugged to death? When it works you get a heatmap when zoomed out, and 3d models with flat roofs when you zoom in far enough) Looks pretty cool. Obviously only covers above-ground buildings or above-ground portions of buildings. Also seems like it tends to view buildings built wall-to-wall next to e…

InfoReseaux remarked that this data is suspicious, to say the least: CC BY-NC 4.0 but contains ODbL licensed data coming from Openstreetmap - but also from Microsoft.

Thread on the Openstreetmap forum: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/is-globalbuildingatlas...

Christian Quest sent the following message to the authors:

"I’m writing to you because I’m surprised by the choice of data license you’ve set on the GlobalBuildingAtlas dataset.

As mentioned and explained in your paper, at least two data sources you’ve been using to create this dataset are under the Open Database License (ODbL): OpenStreetMap and Microsoft building datasets.

I’ve downloaded the extract of data you’re proposing to have a look at the final dataset, and it confirms that building polygons from OSM (and Microsoft) are present in the resulting dataset in a substantial portion.

In such case, your dataset must be published under the ODbL licence (see 4.2), because it is a derivative database (see 1.0 of ODbL license for definition).

A copy of this message has also been sent to the Legal Working Group of the OSM Foundation.

Thanks in advance to fix quickly the license of the dataset you published. This will also allow OpenStreetMap contributors to use it to improve OpenStreetMap, which is not possible with the CC-BY-NC you choose."

Re: Map of all the buildings in the world

#22
post #20
post #10

So here is finally the data that I needed for my idea: walk directions from A to B while never leaving the shadows, suggesting bars and pubs where to wait while the shadows catch up and let you cross “safely” where before was sunny. Useful for scorching weather places like south of Spain.

Would need this, inverted, for winter.

Check out sunseekr its popular here in the uk: https://sunseekr.com/

Re: Map of all the buildings in the world

#23

All of the houses on my block are very weird shapes on this map, it doesn't reflect reality very well

I haven't visited the map, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn they didn't attempt to re-create the building shapes, just location and estimated size. The real shape seems pointless for this dataset.

Building shapes are actually pretty accurate in urban areas. I haven't read the paper, but I think what they were after is building volume. Which obviously requires the footprint shape and height

Re: Map of all the buildings in the world

#28
post #27

They've used a vision transformer to estimate building heights from monocular aerial photographs, so they're guesses at best. Calling this a map is a stretch.

I checked the building heights where I live vs the actual heights, sometimes they display the height as half of what the actual height is.
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