By: Julia Conzon
Building Canada 2020 is a community-led initiative driven by a simple and clear vision: map all buildings in Canada on OpenStreetMap by the year 2020. During OSMGeoWeek (November 12–18), we’re supporting a series of mapathons at Canadian universities and colleges to reach this goal.
An open-source dataset of buildings is an important asset for Canada because it gives anyone the ability to conduct analyses and build tools with that data. For example, building footprints and wheelchair attribute data are used to assess the city’s accessibility. Building data can be merged with property assessment data to visualize property assessment values, or it can be merged with zoning data to visualize allowed versus actual buildings heights.
Apart from urban analyses, the building data is also used for disaster response. During spring 2017 when Ottawa and Gatineau experienced severe flooding, the Canadian Red Cross used building information within OpenStreetMap to validate the number of homes impacted by the high-water levels. They also used this data to produce base maps of the affected area for planning and delivering assistance. Similarly, this past summer, British Columbia, Canada, was in a state of emergency as several forest fires devastated homes across the province. Building footprints were used to conduct impact assessments, so agencies had a more accurate picture of the damage.
#BC2020 Mapathons
We’ve been working closely with Canadian colleges and universities, to help them host mapathons, which bring people together to map the world in OpenStreetMap. Mapathons are a great way to educate students on the open-source GIS tools that are increasingly used for geospatial analysis. It’s also an opportunity for students to learn within a real-world context and contribute meaningful work. I made a wiki for the Building Canada 2020 mapathons during OSMGeoWeek2017; it includes recommendations and resources for hosting your own.
We are creating projects for the Canada OSM Tasking Manager, which will provide all of the background on how to map buildings and also specify which Canadian regions to map. During OSMGeoWeek, we are focusing on mapping rural regions, where building footprints can’t be imported and where there is little-to-no map coverage on OpenStreetMap.
Join the Initiative
It isn’t too late to organize a Building Canada 2020 mapathon. If you are interested, contact me, and if you want to contribute to the Building Canada 2020 initiative, check out the project’s wiki page. Already organizing a mapathon for OSMGeoWeek? Don’t forget to register!
Julia Conzon (@julconz) | Twitter
OSMGeoWeek mapathons support Building Canada 2020 was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.