DigitalGlobe satellite imagery launch for OpenStreetMap | Hacker News Reader

DigitalGlobe satellite imagery launch for OpenStreetMap

blog.digitalglobe.com

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The blog post is... not so much misleading, but it doesn't clearly communicate the impact of this. It's a press release that's light on facts and is worded such that the reader will assume the best.

A better source is the OpenStreetMap Wiki page on DigitalGlobe [1], which is linked from the article, and has been updated by DigitalGlobe with new info.

As of May 9th 2017, DigitalGlobe has just announced availability of satellite imagery directly through a newly launched imagery service. http://blog.digitalglobe.com/news/digitalglobe-satellite-ima...

DigitalGlobe-Premium is a mosaic composed of DigitalGlobe basemap with select regions filled with +Vivid or custom area of interest imagery, 50cm resolution or better, and refreshed more frequently with ongoing updates DigitalGlobe-Standard is a curated set of imagery covering 86% of the earth's landmass, with 30-60cm or resolution where available, backfilled by Landsat. Average age is 2.31 years, with some areas updated 2x year.

DigitalGlobe Satellite EULA: DigitalGlobe, Inc. is pleased to provide its high resolution satellite imagery to OpenStreetMap in support of its mapping initiatives. By using our imagery in the OSM editor, you understand and agree that you may only use our imagery to trace, and validate edits that must be contributed back to OSM. You cannot download our imagery or use our imagery for any other purpose. We retain all right, title and interest in and to our imagery. We provide our imagery “as is,” with all faults and as available; we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, to the extent permitted by applicable law. You can recover from us only direct damages up to an amount equal to the fees you have paid to us to use our imagery on OSM, if any. We are not liable for any other damages, including consequential, lost profits, special, indirect, incidental or punitive damages. Happy mapping!

Still, this is beautiful and recent imagery and will help greatly for OpenStreetMap contributors to trace up-to-date features.

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DigitalGlobe

I wonder if, now that the costs of satellite launches are starting to come down and camera-equipped drones are commonplace, it might be feasible in the near future to start building up a truly open collection of satellite and aerial imagery for use in projects like OpenStreetMap.

> and camera-equipped drones are commonplace

In Germany, flying drones over occupied areas is expressly forbidden by law to protect the occupants' privacy.

There are already too many idiots and creeps flying around with drones, we don't need to add Internet publication to the mix.

How high up does the drone need to fly before taking pictures and publishing them is acceptable? I mean that's basically what these mapping satellites are: very high-flying drones taking pictures of the ground to be published online.

Person taking a photo out of an airplane: Allowed.

Person remote controlling a camera on an airplane: Not allowed.

We shouldn't be making laws saying a human can do something but a machine cannot. That leads to humans having pointless jobs simply because laws prevent the use of automation.

They get round these laws by sending pilots up in cheap hobby planes like cesnas with cameras attached to the bottom.

I don't know if you will get 'open collection', but I suspect the cost will come down and quality will go up.

That's already being attempted with http://openaerialmap.org/.

thanks for the feedback. As the author of the blog post, I had to assume the audience doesn't know what OpenStreetMap is to start off with. So yes, it's general and a bit vague. I added more detail to an OSM Diary here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/@kevin_bullock/diary/4113... and glad to see you found the wiki.

As a long time contributor to OpenStreetMap, this is hugely appreciated. Getting direct support from Digital Globe is important and hopefully helps signal that OSM is worthy of people's time and contributions.

love this feedback, thanks! At DigitalGlobe, and many other tech companies we work with, there is a growing understanding of the value and importance of OSM. It's a database of the Earth's features and nobody should "own" that.

At first I thought it was a data donation, but it seems like it's only API integration with support.

Still pretty cool as an alternative to Bing satellite data, I guess it's pretty unlikely we'll have open-licensed satellite data in the near future.

Check out Radiant: https://www.radiant.earth

What am I checking out? Radiant doesn't appear to actually be anything or do anything. That page appears to be a vague description of a thing that purports to provide access to data but doesn't actually provide any information on how to get it.

It's an initiative that has been backed by the Gates Foundation and Omidyar Network. There have been a few press releases about the goals of Radiant, e.g. [1][2]. I shared the link with the intent of simply pointing to their mission, which is to provide free access to a wealth of geospatial data.

I don't know where the project stands at present, so I dont have an objective measure to discriminate between what they claim to be doing and what they're actually doing.

Coincidentally, I had a meeting in DC today at the Omidyar Network and Radiant was mentioned briefly in the context of providing startups with a way to bootstrap without spending large chunks of money on acquiring geospatial data.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-satellites-huma...

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/bill-gates-melind...

I upvoted because this does sound interesting, but as another commenter said, at the moment it appears to be vaporware (or at least invite-only, since they ask people to email code@radiant.earth). Is there something real behind this or is it a scam to get newsletter subscriptions?

It's a couple completely new imagery layers. Digital Globe has lots of imagery and these layers appear to have different imagery for lots of the areas I've checked. Digital Globe is offering these two layers to OSM editors to improve OpenStreetMap, and it's great.

thank you! the service will get better over time as we update imagery and provide metadata.

Most of the EU satellite stuff is open licensed, lookup Sentinel II. Various wavelengths and new data every 5 days (so if it's cloudy you can try again).

It's not the most user-friendly though, you have to download large swathes at a time.

NASA has datasets that are easy to integrate into maps. See https://gibs.earthdata.nasa.gov/

Sentinel II images are great and provide many wavelengths. The resolution is a bit low for tracing though I think.

NASA Landsat program is a great example of Open Data. It's important to remember that US taxpayers funded the creation, launch and operation of the satellites. EU Sentinel is similar. So the imagery is paid for, as users we just don't have to pay twice.

DigitalGlobe's GeoEye-1 was also partially funded with taxpayer money in exchange for unlimited military access and exclusive use of the highest resolutions. It is time the general public got to reap the benefits too.

Satellite or plane?

My understanding is that most civilian satellite imagery is pretty low resolution. The aerial imagery used on most maps sites is taken from planes -- there's clear parallax in some areas of the image, and far too much perspective in general to be taken from an orbital platform.

DigitalGlobe has multiple satellites with ~30cm pixels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldView-4

The layers here are satellite imagery. Mapping sites definitely bring in any other sources that make sense though.

I haven't looked at it a great deal, the "Premium" layer appears to be more carefully produced with the "Standard" layer favoring fresher imagery. So both are nice resources.

As well as Bing, there is also aerial imagery from Mapbox. So this is another option for us, which is great.

In many ways, aerial imagery is much better for OSM than data. Trying to conflatuate 2 data sources (DG & OSM) would be a massive headache.

Darn... Doesn't look like this is in a JOSM [1] release yet. Really, really looking forward to this. (Mapping areas near my house, especially parks, is something that I find to be a great way to relax in the evenings.)

[1] https://josm.openstreetmap.de/

It should be available in the JOSM imagery settings (they are global layers so have to manually be added to imagery menu).

There is a button in the dialog to pull the latest layer list from the JOSM website (that also happens at startup).

yes, coming to JOSM soon. I have been working with the JOSM developer team. Stay tuned.

Excellent; thank you! JOSM / OSM is the basis for a lot of mountain bike trail mapping work that I do. Another source of imagery will just be cake. (GPS traces only go so far...)

This will make a big difference for the rural area I moved to. I was able to trace many of the houses around the outskirts of my village from aerial imagery. However, on the day that both Bing Maps and Mapbox shot their imagery, a massive cloud blanked out the center, the place where most outsiders would be bound for and where most of the POIs are located.

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