Hi everyone! A group of coworkers and I recently got started with mapping via the HOT Task Manager. We’re mapping an area around Lake Chad (project 5304), but we’re really struggling with identifying round buildings. It’s really unclear to me whether something is a round hut, or potentially some brush or another natural feature. I included a screenshot below of what I’m referring to, where we began identifying round objects as buildings in the top left. Are we on the right track? Does anyone have any advice for determining buildings in this region? (I checked some other existing projects, but it was still a bit confusing, and I couldn’t find any tutorials addressing this.)
Thanks everyone – just wanted to make sure we weren’t doing a ton of mapping erroneously!
Hi Steve. No direct answer from me. But did you consider using the Questions and Comments function in the Tasking Manager? You might find more people privy to the area there.
Although most of the round objects that are not green are probably man made, although not necessarily buildings, I think you really need to know about the local culture to be able to properly photo-interpret this information. Are there any ways that you can get on the ground photographs of typical houses and courtyards? Do you have access to people from the area in question, or failing that, aid workers who have worked there?
Thank you everyone! TZorn, good suggestion with using the Questions and Comments function – I’ll leave notes in there. Hadw, I did do some Google Image searching, and it does look like at least some people in the area live in round huts. I don’t have access to people from the area in question, but I’ll reach out to our local Red Cross chapter that set up the project in the first place.
I think I’ll err on the side of tagging too many buildings instead of not enough. Hoping I’ll get more proficient with practice!
I was thinking of other things as well, e.g. are their haystacks? where are they typically placed in a village?
With that sort of cultural knowledge, you would be able see the village, or a single compound, as a whole.
On the other hand, a principle of OSM is that some information is better than none, so a reasonable guess is better than not having anything at all. They main difficulty with that is that, in areas with no local mappers, errors could persist of decades.
