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The satellite imagery has shifted by several metres from where it used to be, at least it has for my area in nort-west Scotland, soo all the roads and buildings in the region are now slightly offset from where they appear on the satellite image. This makes it very difficult to update features because in order to maintain their relationship to other objects they have to be drawn out of position from where the satellite image shows them. Why did this shift occur, and will it be corrected or is it permanent?

asked 23 Nov '20, 19:55

Gairloch's gravatar image

Gairloch
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accept rate: 0%


We don't control these images, they come from third parties, and these third parties don't tell us when they update their imagery. Sometimes they don't even know that something has changed!

The general advice for working with any kind of aerial imagery is to align it with some GPS tracks that hopefully exist. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners_Guide_1.3.3.0#Align_aerial_imagery for some instructions/links. Of course, if your area is lacking GPS tracks you can also try to align the aerial image with what's already there on OSM, though this might quickly become tiring if different mappers have worked to different standards!

Note that you can select from a range of different aerial imagery providers in your editor; not all are equally good and equally recent. Don't believe everything you see on the image...

permanent link

answered 23 Nov '20, 20:02

Frederik%20Ramm's gravatar image

Frederik Ramm ♦
82.5k927201273
accept rate: 23%

3

To add to this, in north-west Scotland you should also be able to use the roads on the "OS OpenData StreetView" imagery to get an idea of alignment. That's often useful in addition to GPS traces. Other components of that layer might not be up to date (woodland, for example), but roads, and waterways away from upload areas, are pretty good.

(23 Nov '20, 21:31) SomeoneElse ♦
3

Also larger buildings (same caveats apply about possibly being out-of-date as the OS StreetView is based on April 2016).

(23 Nov '20, 22:07) SK53 ♦
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question asked: 23 Nov '20, 19:55

question was seen: 1,247 times

last updated: 23 Nov '20, 22:07

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum