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Should I manually add building contours in Germany?

1

I already did some work (http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.08712&lon=6.31741&zoom=15&layers=M), but the official data is far more detailed and complete ( e.g. search for erkelenz on this page: http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html ).

The state-owned data will be made available for free in the future (http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Bund-stellt-Geodaten-kostenfrei-bereit-1629289.html), so I wonder whether it makes sense at all to work on this?

asked 19 Jul '12, 20:12

alexander-wilms's gravatar image

alexander-wilms
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accept rate: 50%

edited 19 Jul '12, 20:13

2 Answers:

1

The link you quote only talks about data owned by the federal government of Germany. Building outlines are not among that data; they are only collected by local administrations or the Länder for which the legal situation is different.

Even if such data were made available, it is far from clear whether it would ever be imported into OSM.

Buildings that you trace now can be used by yourself or others to record data against them - house numbers or POIs for example. Holding off such mapping because one believes that at some point in the future government data might be available is not a good idea.

answered 19 Jul '12, 21:04

Frederik%20Ramm's gravatar image

Frederik Ramm ♦
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accept rate: 23%

2

Yes please!

  • The state-owned data you mention is the data of the federal („Bund“) government. It may be made available for free as in money, but I wouldn’t count on that it will be made available free to use for any purpose, including commercial purposes and relicensing under OSM’s license. The interesting cadaster data with streets and houses is collected and traded by the single states („Länder“). Despite year-long lobbying by the Open Data movement, it will not be made available for free in the foreseeable future.
  • The OSM data you contribute to can be used freely for many purposes, as opposed to the official data which comes with many restrictions on the use.
  • The OSM data has the potential to be enriched with more detail than can be found elsewhere (for free), like house numbers or names, points of interests, etc.

Yes, it will take some years to get good building coverage. Like it took some years to get good street coverage.

answered 19 Jul '12, 21:12

hfs's gravatar image

hfs
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accept rate: 17%