(posted on talk@osm but I forgot to cc: hot@osm) On Mon, July 2, 2018 1:26 pm, Robert Banick wrote: > Many humanitarian groups use buildings as a rough proxy for population
Yes, I have had that explanation from multiple sources involved in humanitarian uses of Openstreetmap: from that they can calculate, for example, the impact a a flood. I believe that it is an awfully expensive way to gather that data. A landuse=residential with a density qualifier may do the trick cheaply with the addition of a density qualifier attribute: single family houses, sparse multi-tenant buildings, dense multi-tenant buildings... This is actually the data model used by the government of Senegal at their national level with a street-level granularity. If one wants to go further and count the number of dwelling units, then a node is sufficient (maybe along with an attribute to discriminate single or multi-tenancy) Shapes are of course good for many other uses but, if the actual user requirement that data is gathered for is a population density map, then they are a waste of resources. I'm pretty sure that contributors are happier if their efforts are directed at profitable purposes. _______________________________________________ HOT mailing list HOT@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
