Alright…so no fundraiser…
Is there someone we could ask nicely?
Maybe Bing for some updates? Do they even have updated data on the unprofitable parts of the world?
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There are attempts, see:
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I wouldn’t mind having to do an Oauth login and copy paste a unique API key into JOSM, but that seems like it would just lead to an increase in the number of bogus OpenStreetMap accounts.
I’m assuming any solution based on per-user keys would be a bit more user friendly. While not a panacea it would make misuse of keys at least trackable.
Just as a hint to avoid misuse:
In Osmand you get free map downloads when having contributed to OSM considerably in the last weeks.
I wouldn’t mind if I would have to undergo some procedures to have access to Maxar imagery.
In some regions these were definitely the most actual images.
That might work if we robustly checked every edit by new users, but we don’t. For a small niche thing like Osmand you can get away with it but I think for something like satellite imagery we might find the Canadian wilderness getting filled with bogus but plausible trees to ge the edit number up. That’s if the scrapers care enough about the map to at least try to avoid harmful edits, which I doubt they would unless they’re overlaying OSM.
Edit: the requirement to be a pre-existing editor is also unfriendly to new mappers, which might be harmful long term.
With OsmAnd’s “bitcoin” scheme, OSM saw a few people trying to game the system by trying to move nodes back and forth. The mapping wasn’t really “incorrect”, just “unnecessary”.
The idea of tying imagery access to contributions reminds me of a Wikimedia Foundation program called The Wikipedia Library. It offers Wikimedians institutional access to premium subscription databases such as JSTOR, Newspapers.com, and Gale Cengage. Access to most of the resources is based on the number of contributions, age of the account, and recent activity; some resources like Newspapers.com have a separate manually reviewed application process. Participants agree to cite their sources when using TWL. On a technical level, TWL endorses individual logins or provides OAuth-style integration using the databases’ existing authentication schemes.
To my knowledge, this program hasn’t resulted in any significant nonsense editing on Wikipedia, but if that ever happens, blocking the user from Wikipedia would also block the user from TWL. The main downside of this approach is that it depends on volunteers to (minimally) vet applicants to one of the sources that don’t provide automatic access.
Even so, I agree that Maxar is currently such a basic resource that putting it behind a bureaucratic process could impact the project’s growth in some regions. This is a wake-up call for some regions to work to further diversify the available imagery resources in ELI, to the extent that this is possible.
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One of the quirks in this mini-drama is that it is quite unclear if Maxar is still being paid to provide the imagery or not. As some may remember this all goes back to a backroom deal in the aftermath of Facebooks chaotic attempts at adding ML generated data to OSM. See New aerial imagery from Digital Globe? - OSM Help
The last time (as I recall) the problem started half december 2019 and was fixed half february 2020.
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This doesn’t feel like a “mini-drama” to me.
We’re currently in a spot where APIs are being heavily priced (see Twitter, Reddit) and we might lose a very good source for imagery in regions of this planet where alternatives are very bad or not there at all.
It might be not relevant for people who map in 1st and 2nd world countries where there are national alternatives or other providers like Bing give a good enough experience but for most parts of this planet, this is not the case (at least from my personal experience).
I hope it becomes a “mini-drama” when we get some kind of deal soon though…
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Maxar is not under the slightest obligation to provide us access to the imagery in question as far as we know, so you are just going to have to live with the situation, organise an alternative or map without imagery support.
All are completely possible.
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I never said they are obliged to provide us with something.
I just didn’t want the loss to be played down.
How am I supposed to “organise an alternative”? How do one organise such a thing?
Mapping without imagery support in remote areas of this planet is impossible…
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That’s why you should always make backups, in case you lose something. (Just joking.)
You buy imagery from one of the, essentially 2, sat imagery providers or you organize/buy flights to gather aerial imagery (I would note that the former has been done in an OSM context and the later on a small scale with drones).
I believe the main issue is that you’ve bought in to a narrative that this is something that has to be done with urgency, but there are plenty of worthwhile, even from an “humanitarian” pov, mapping activities that don’t rely on having high resolution imagery available.
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This will be a bitter pill to swallow for mappers who don’t remember the old days when we were stuck with Landsat and Yahoo! Aerial Imagery (and walked uphill both ways to school fighting dinosaurs). Fortunately things still aren’t as bad as they were back then, but it’s worth noting that many mappers get their fix by mapping remotely, making alternatives like drone mapping somewhat impractical. Drone mapping is a relatively expensive hobby compared to armchair mapping, world travel moreso.
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My worry is not that I am unable to map based on ‘high resolution’ imagery but that the available imagery is so old that in areas where there has been a great deal of development, including totally new road layouts that have been mapped using the more up to date Maxar imagery these new developments will now be removed by remote mappers. Africa is already plagued by poor quality mapping anyway. This makes it worse. I just go off and map rivers and other natural features that do not change so readily. Although new mining projects in remote areas do not appear in the Bing imagery. By my estimation some of the Bing imagery is over 10 years out of date in some places. Perhaps we just tag it ‘Here be dragons.’
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Just to put some numbers against this, I had a look at changesets mentioning “Bing” or “Maxar” in an “imagery_used”** tag.
Worldwide in March:
changesets=> select count(*) from osm_changeset where created_at > '2023-03-01 00:00:00' and created_at < '2023-04-01 00:00:00' and tags -> 'imagery_used' like '%Bing%';
count
--------
269446
(1 row)
changesets=> select count(*) from osm_changeset where created_at > '2023-03-01 00:00:00' and created_at < '2023-04-01 00:00:00' and tags -> 'imagery_used' like '%Maxar%';
count
--------
131998
(1 row)
In Africa*** in March:
SELECT count(id)
FROM osm_changeset c, (SELECT ST_SetSRID(ST_MakeEnvelope(-30.0,-48.0,55.0,34.0),4326) AS geom) s
WHERE ST_CoveredBy(c.geom, s.geom) and created_at > '2023-03-01 00:00:00' and created_at < '2023-04-01 00:00:00' and tags -> 'imagery_used' LIKE '%Bing%';
count
-------
17489
(1 row)
SELECT count(id)
FROM osm_changeset c, (SELECT ST_SetSRID(ST_MakeEnvelope(-30.0,-48.0,55.0,34.0),4326) AS geom) s
WHERE ST_CoveredBy(c.geom, s.geom) and created_at > '2023-03-01 00:00:00' and created_at < '2023-04-01 00:00:00' and tags -> 'imagery_used' LIKE '%Maxar%';
count
-------
41871
(1 row)
** obviously this’ll select mostly iD rather than other editors, and “amount edited” isn’t proportional to “number of changesets”.
*** actually quite a big square box that includes Africa
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Total changesets, Africa:
FROM osm_changeset c, (SELECT ST_SetSRID(ST_MakeEnvelope(-30.0,-48.0,55.0,34.0),4326) AS geom) s
WHERE ST_CoveredBy(c.geom, s.geom) and created_at > '2023-03-01 00:00:00' and created_at < '2023-04-01 00:00:00';
count
--------
119761
(1 row)
and worldwide:
WHERE created_at > '2023-03-01 00:00:00' and created_at < '2023-04-01 00:00:00'; count
---------
1214902
(1 row)
As a caveat I haven’t actually sanity checked these numbers against known numbers derived from elsewhere.
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I looked at usage from both iD and JOSM and by far the countries with the most Maxar usage have been
- India,
- Indonesia,
- Turkey,
- Brazil,
- El Salvador,
- Guatemala, and
- Tanzania.
I also checked, and 35% of Maxar usage is from changesets that mention hotosm in the comment.
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