
 Building ages in the Netherlands - Schiphol
https://parallel.co.uk/netherlands/#13.8/52.365/4.9/0/40
======
lucb1e
For those who are curious, the building age data comes from the Dutch
government (as others already said). It was imported into OpenStreetMap about
5 years ago by a few dozen volunteers including myself.

The data contains addresses and buildings (outline, building started date, and
an identifier to make updates easier). This means we removed all existing
buildings and addresses in the country, which felt really risky, but because
the import was done manually and only tool-assisted, it seems we managed to
get it right. Took a few months, but once enough volunteers hopped on, it went
quite fast. If I remember correctly, once you got the hang of it (your third
import or so), an average municipality took about 2 hours (we have 350
municipalities).

For the Dutch speakers among us, more info about the project can be found
here:
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NL:BAG](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NL:BAG)

I am not sure where Mapbox' height data comes from. In OSM, you can give a
"levels" tag to indicate how many levels a building has (from which the height
can be estimated), or a height tag in meters if it is known, but the buildings
don't have that. Perhaps it is just assumed that large buildings are a bit
taller and building=house is an average house height unless otherwise noted?
Or maybe they use the Dutch AHN, which is a very accurate height scan of the
Netherlands. Some people made it into a 3d picture, e.g.
[https://snipboard.io/Sq6C38.jpg](https://snipboard.io/Sq6C38.jpg) (this only
uses AHN data, not OSM, so it only has the tops of objects as points, but
that's still quite an accurate outline).

~~~
Freak_NL
To be more precise: it was imported en masse once, and has been meticulously
maintained via localised imports ever since. OpenStreetMap in the Netherlands
shows how open data can flourish when volunteers and government collaborate.

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incanus77
Back when I was at Mapbox and we were developing the library used for this
sort of visualization, I did a take on my home city of Portland, OR in a
similar fashion:

[https://blog.mapbox.com/visualizing-an-entire-citys-
building...](https://blog.mapbox.com/visualizing-an-entire-citys-buildings-
live-with-runtime-styling-453fe7e39ae6)

(Disclaimer: some of the images, and especially the code formatting, don’t
seem to have survived very well)

I wrote there a bit more about the data processing side of this, and I tried
to make a compelling mobile visualization that was fast. I’d use it a lot for
demo and pitch-type meetings, and especially with an HDMI connector direct
from iPhone to a 50, 60 or 70” display, the frame rate and fluidity was super
impressive.

To this day, I just plain love the tech that we built.

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ThisNameIsTaken
Impressive visualisation. Seems to be an extrusion of the Kadaster
(government) building data towards the maximum height of the structure.

Much more precise data is also also available: there are height maps of NL
with a resolution of 5 points per square meter, IIRC (not my field). Eg [1],
but perhaps more parties do similar work.

[1]:
[https://ahn.arcgisonline.nl/Postcodetool/s2.html?app=Postcod...](https://ahn.arcgisonline.nl/Postcodetool/s2.html?app=Postcodetool)

And as mentioned elsewhere, they indeed misrepresent renovations &
construction work as building dates.

~~~
tda
And even better, you can view the underlying data as a 3d point cloud here:
(crashed my Firefox on mobile)
[http://potree.entwine.io/data/ahn.html](http://potree.entwine.io/data/ahn.html)

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mtts
Cute, but riddled with errors. In my area (Arnhem / Nijmegen) it assigns 1975
as the date for buildings that are much newer. It also sets my house as 1925
when 1900 would have been more accurate (it was, however, split in 2 around
1920 or so - maybe that’s where the confusion comes from?)

~~~
boredpudding
They didn't create the dataset. The dataset is from the government's
Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen (BAG).

If you spot errors, contact your local municipality, since they provide this
data to the central registry.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It's possible they're misinterpreting the dataset.

~~~
thanatos519
In my case, the dataset is wrong. My entire neighbourhood was built in 1987,
and my house had extensive renovations in 2010. Now my house is marked as
being built in 2010. Oddly, pretty much every house in the neighbourhood has
had some big renovation or other, but only mine and one other one ("2008")
have the wrong date in the registry.

I'm not going to correct it, because it doesn't matter.

~~~
Freak_NL
> I'm not going to correct it, because it doesn't matter.

It does matter (although it is possible you simply don't care). This data is
used for a lot of purposes, which may include the calculation of your house's
estimated worth for taxation.

Most municipalities do appreciate the feedback via
[https://bagviewer.kadaster.nl](https://bagviewer.kadaster.nl). A more
accurate public dataset benefits society as a whole.

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stared
There is similar one for Katowice, Poland:
[http://katowickiebudynki.eu/](http://katowickiebudynki.eu/) (2d, with
Leaflet.js)

~~~
stared
...and the downvote if for?

(I am not related to the project above, just in case.)

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neals
TIL my house was built in 1338. I honestly had no idea.

~~~
javajosh
It's a mark of distinction to live in a house that old. You should be proud!

~~~
neals
I'm just sad it's 1 year off from 1337, to be honest.

~~~
bane
you could say it's better than l33t

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billfruit
Very impressive visualization, works smoothly even on a mid range Android
phone.

~~~
bboygravity
Yeah, this is cool stuff.

It feels similar to me to OSMand+ (an open alternative to the very laggy
Google Maps).

~~~
Freak_NL
OsmAnd+ isn't open (it has a proprietary licence), but the source of the map
data (OpenStreetMap) is.

There seems to be a free software alternative for OsmAnd+ called OsmAnd~ by
the way:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OsmAnd#Licensing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OsmAnd#Licensing)

The non-premium version called OsmAnd seems to be FOSS too.

------
tmilard
Does someone knows wich 3D API there are using ? \- BabylonJs (guess?) [could
explain the smooth visualisation] \- another one ?

~~~
themmes
I believe they used Mapbox for both the basemap and 3D visualisation

[https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-
js/example/3d-buildings/](https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-
js/example/3d-buildings/)

~~~
tmilard
Thank you

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Zenst
Very much worth viewing in relation to the effects of WW2
[http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2014/04/amsterdam-
during...](http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2014/04/amsterdam-during-
war.html) with
[https://maps.amsterdam.nl/woii/](https://maps.amsterdam.nl/woii/) being the
one you want.

~~~
mightybyte
Yes, this was my thought as well. I was in Rotterdam last summer which was
mostly leveled by WWII bombing. It was very striking how much more modern the
city was than cities like Amsterdam which came away with much less
destruction. Obviously the destruction was horrible, but it was really
interesting to me how it paved the way for redevelopment and vibrant newness.
I guess this should be obvious. The chain of cause and effect is very
straightforward and unsurprising in retrospect. But somehow at the same time
it also seems counterintuitive how destruction can enable advancement.

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balazsdukai
For those who missed the description on the webpage, the data that is
visualized is called "3D BAG", which we get by combining the "BAG" (buildings)
and the "AHN" (point cloud) data sets. The 3D BAG
([http://3dbag.bk.tudelft.nl/](http://3dbag.bk.tudelft.nl/)) is created by the
us at the 3D geoinformation group
([https://3d.bk.tudelft.nl/](https://3d.bk.tudelft.nl/)).

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osobo
It's got my house dated incorrectly. Looks fancy though.

~~~
NietTim
Yea I was wondering this, the house I was born in is in a street of mostly
1920's houses, and then one corner house is from 1875, doesn't seem right to
me. 99% else seems right though, really fun to look trough

~~~
Freak_NL
You can look up the source data here:

[https://bagviewer.kadaster.nl](https://bagviewer.kadaster.nl)

It is possible to provide feedback there; your local municipality will look
into any feedback provided.

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armandduijn
Pretty impressive. But it would be nice if you could turn-off certain era's to
see how an area evolved.

~~~
rootbear
That reminds me of a scene in Clarke’s novel “The City and the Stars”, where
there is a map that lets one view the entire billion year history of the city
of Diaspora. I thought that was a cool idea when I read the book decades ago
and now we can actually do it!

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betternot
Rotterdam, which was bombed during WW2:
[https://parallel.co.uk/netherlands/#13.49/51.91912/4.48476/8](https://parallel.co.uk/netherlands/#13.49/51.91912/4.48476/8)

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jessaustin
The colors for "really old" and "unknown" shouldn't be so similar.

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projektfu
A lot of houses in Amsterdam date from around the same time as the founding of
New Amsterdam

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amelius
The buildings are shown in 3D, but it seems it is only a 2D representation +
height.

~~~
growlist
Hell of a lot easier to generate, and to render.

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stinos
Is that base layer something which is standard in OSM and how do I get it?

~~~
zeptomu
No, the data is from official government sources. OSM data is good, but mostly
not _that_ good in comparison with official sources.

