
Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data - seshagiric
https://blogs.bing.com/maps/2018-06/microsoft-releases-125-million-building-footprints-in-the-us-as-open-data?PC=EMMX01
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rmc
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.

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Krasnol
Why do you assume anyone using this data is not thankful?

~~~
Jonnax
Because consumers of the data may not know.

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Krasnol
I'm sure consumers doesn't know my input there too but I don't care much. I
mean...what do you expect? A banner? Money?

Those who entered the data from their browser and directly used the bing data
do know and I'm sure they appreciate it.

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doikor
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 very accurate topological map too.

The moment this information was released for free both OSM and Google Maps
quality jumped a notch or two. Before this google maps only had roads but now
it has small foot paths etc too.

[https://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/e-services/open-data-
fil...](https://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/e-services/open-data-file-
download-service)

~~~
rcdmd
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.

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endorphone
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.

~~~
reaperducer
_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. Saint George doesn't need skyscraper functions, and New York
doesn't want to measure airports on top of mesas.

The real world is messy, and so is pretty much every single GIS deployment.
The real world doesn't digitize well.

~~~
endorphone
"Whether it should be standardized is a matter of debate."

In the same way that vaccines are `debatable'. To export an accurate, up to
date model of roads (and road data) and optionally building layouts should
absolutely be the norm.

Nor does a standardized export format necessitate using a single uniform GIS
solution, of which I've had to inter-operate with a number.

The real world digitizes spectacularly well, a lot of people just make poor
choices and make excuses (or worse, buy nonsensical excuses) for not helping
in getting there.

~~~
reaperducer
_The real world digitizes spectacularly well_

No, it doesn't. If it did, then the surveying industry would be out of
business. Yet every time a building is permitted in the United States, surveys
are done.

Here's an example for a recent project surveyed in Chicago just this year:

West Roosevelt Road; South Clark Street; a line beginning at a point 116 feet
north of vacated West 16″‘ Street as measured along the west line of South
Clark Street that is westerly 135.20 feet along the arc of a circle having a
radius of 375.00 feet concave northerly and whose chord bears north 79 degrees
49 minutes 52 seconds west a distance of 135.20 feet; a line north 69 degrees
46 minutes 04 seconds west a distance of 101.85 feet; a line north 69 degrees
49 minutes 57 seconds west a distance of 26.00 feet; a line along the arc of a
circle having a radius of 407.80 feet concave southerly and whose chord bears
north 75 degrees 52 minutes 04 seconds west a distance of 85.51 feet a
distance of westerly 85.67 feet; a line north 83 degrees 47 minutes 05 seconds
west a distance of 164.45 feet; a line north 69 degrees 43 minutes 24 seconds
west a distance of 25.16 feet; a line north 43 degrees 07 minutes 24 seconds
west a distance of 31.91 feet to a point on the easterly dock line of the
former South Branch of the Chicago River; a line south 46 degrees 47 minutes
47 seconds west along the easterly dock line of the former South Branch of the
Chicago River a distance of 73.33 feet; a line south 89 degrees 54 minutes 55
seconds west a distance of 32.69 feet; a line south 49 degrees 36 minutes 35
seconds a distance of 46.38 feet; a line north 89 degrees 54 minutes 55
seconds east a distance of 296.25 feet; a line easterly along the arc of a
circle having a radius of 375.00 feet concave southerly and whose chord bears
south 78 degrees 32 minutes 39 seconds east a distance of 109.97 feet for a
distance of 110.36 feet; a line south 69 degrees 46 minutes 04 seconds east a
distance o f 136.90 feet; a line easterly along the arc of a circle having a
radius of 391.00 feet concave northerly and whose chord bears south 79 degrees
33 minutes 50 seconds east a distance of 135.64 feet for a distance of 136.33
feet; South Clark Street; vacated West 16″‘ Street; a line 155.40 feet west of
and parallel to South Clark Street; the north line of vacated West 16″”
Street; and the South Branch of the Chicago River

Digitize that.

Source: [https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2018/05/29/everything-
th...](https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2018/05/29/everything-there-is-to-
know-so-far-about-the-78-in-chicagos-south-loop/)

~~~
endorphone
You have this somewhat backwards.

Cities have loads of data that define property lines. They could keep it on
paper, but more and more they keep it in computers now. Surveyors take that
digital data and convert it into its precise real world marks. This has
literally _nothing_ to do with whether the real world digitizes well, and if
really stretched only proves that it certainly does because that's the entire
basis of property grants.

Further, pointing out a massive civic project in the middle of a large city as
some sort of counterpoint, when it is in reality still not that complex at
all, doesn't make your case.

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kerng
>>The CNTK toolkit developed by Microsoft is open source and available on
GitHub as well. The ResNet3 model is open source and available on GitHub. Our
Bing Maps computer vision team will be presenting this work at the annual
International State of the Map conference in Milan, Italy

Nice!

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TekMol
I wonder if I ever heard about Microsoft Maps before. What is the state of it?
Who uses it?

So I tried www.bing.com/maps. The first thing that surprises me is that it
tries to set 5 cookies from google.com and one from www.google.com

What is the reason for Microsoft to allow Google to track everybody who uses
their maps?

~~~
lucb1e
> What is the state of it? Who uses it?

In the Netherlands the businesses (shops, restaurants, and general businesses)
are more complete than OpenStreetMap, but not as complete as Google because
everyone sees Google as the de facto standard and they push owners to add
their info in the de facto Google search.

Bing Maps is fast and responsive (unlike Google Maps on anything other than
their own, proprietary platforms such as Google Chrome, the Google Maps app,
or Google Earth), and has aerial imagery and traffic info (unlike OSM).

Bonus game: turn off labels on satellite view, zoom out to world view, and try
to find your house or other places. Surprisingly hard!

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jakobegger
When I read the part about downloading the dataset from Github, my first
reaction was "Can't Microsoft afford to host downloads themselves?", and then
I realized they own Github now...

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jmspring
Seriously, the two aren’t related. Microsoft has had public projects on Github
for a couple of years now with more important projects being made public
regularly.

Downvoted because the cynicism and not paying attention.

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justinclift
Out of curiosity, I wonder if this data dump includes "sensitive" buildings?
eg things that would generally be blurred/missing/etc on OSM for various
reasons.

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maxerickson
If it is visible in the imagery they analyzed it wouldn't be intentionally
left out of OSM without some superseding information that it didn't exist
anymore.

~~~
justinclift
Makes sense, thanks. :)

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kozikow
If anyone is interested in that type of data, our startup
([https://tensorflight.com](https://tensorflight.com)) extracts information
like footprints and 10 other property factors for insurance (including bing
imagery). More info: [https://tensorflight.com/catalogue#Objects-supported-by-
Tens...](https://tensorflight.com/catalogue#Objects-supported-by-TensorFlight)
.

~~~
jollivier
Hey ! I'll look into it with a lot of interest. Your catalog link is not very
obvious in your navigation (only in text corpus). You could make it more
visible in the orange bottom navbar? Cheers

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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.

