Detect road and building from satellites image

cramfor · November 17, 2017, 2:28pm

I am new for OpenStreetMap, and noticed that the OpenStreetMap is allowed to visit the DigitalGloble Maps API or Bing Maps API, and for the OSM contributor can choose different map layer such like DigitalGlobe Premium and Bing aerial imagery in edit mode.

Thus, here is my question: is it possible/allowed to detect road and building via deep learning or something like that from satellites images?

hadw · November 17, 2017, 3:03pm

You would need to read the specific terms of use. I imagine some are restricted to manual tracing. Note that Bing only allow some of its imagery to be used. In particularly they do not allow oblique views to be used.

Also, you need to be aware of the rules on mechanical imports, and I think this would be treated as a mechanical import unless it was only used to suggest the location of buildings that were then individually checked by eye.

In particular, buildings need to be checked to see if they are already mapped, as far as possible checked to see that they haven’t been demolished since the image was created, and account taken of local offsets between the datum for surrounding objects and that for the image (in particular to make sure they ended up in the correct relationship to already mapped roads and railways, and didn’t overlap other buildings.)

I assume you don’t really mean satellite images, as most of the images on which buildings are visible are take from aircraft. Most real satellite images are probably US federal government (NASA) public domain (in USA) material.

SomeoneElse · November 17, 2017, 4:01pm

Have a read of the Thai forum https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=46 , where there’s been discussion about Facebook trying to do this (with varying levels of success).

cramfor · November 18, 2017, 1:20am

I find this topic “How AI applied to HighRes Satellite Imagery can help OSM Mappers?” in this forum. It’s very impressively.
https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=55219

cramfor · November 18, 2017, 1:28am

Thanks for your reminder. I should read carefully about this wiki topic: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DigitalGlobe

Also, i think https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=55220 this topic may give me some inspiration.

hadw:

You would need to read the specific terms of use. I imagine some are restricted to manual tracing. Note that Bing only allow some of its imagery to be used. In particularly they do not allow oblique views to be used.

Also, you need to be aware of the rules on mechanical imports, and I think this would be treated as a mechanical import unless it was only used to suggest the location of buildings that were then individually checked by eye.

In particular, buildings need to be checked to see if they are already mapped, as far as possible checked to see that they haven’t been demolished since the image was created, and account taken of local offsets between the datum for surrounding objects and that for the image (in particular to make sure they ended up in the correct relationship to already mapped roads and railways, and didn’t overlap other buildings.)

I assume you don’t really mean satellite images, as most of the images on which buildings are visible are take from aircraft. Most real satellite images are probably US federal government (NASA) public domain (in USA) material.