Missing Building Polygons in Hull Area

Help and support
1

Hello everyone,

I’ve been working with OpenStreetMap data, specifically the gis_osm_buildings_a_free_1 file, to map buildings in the Hull area (specifically HU4 postcode). However, I’ve noticed that a significant number of house polygons seem to be missing from the data when compared to other sources like Google Maps.

I’ve verified this by cross-referencing with Google Maps and by zooming in on the area in OpenStreetMap directly. Is this data actually missing in OpenStreetMap, or is there another source I should be using to obtain complete building polygon data for Hull?

Any help or guidance on where to find all building polygons in Hull would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

2

You can look at https://www.openstreetmap.org/ to see are these buildings are mapped or not.

Note that OpenStreetMap is editable by anyone, so if you want you can help with mapping missing ones (though copying for example from Google Maps is not allowed).

I have no good recommendations for alternative sources, maybe someone will have an idea.

3

If tracing using popular OSM editors, iD and josm, both have suitable layers with which show simplified building outlines. The layers are named “OS OpenData Streetview (2016)”, and “OS OpenMap Local (2022)”. Both show simply building outlines but with other details being different.

Suitably licenced data from Ordnance Survey can be downloaded from their data hub. These include vector data that includes simple building outlines, but alignment is slightly out due to the projection that OS use. Fixing this is difficult.

If your going to use available imagery eg bing, then it is important to also open the Cadastral Layer overlay. This is overlay shows property boundaries and is accurate. It allows you to move the imagery to the correct place.

4

I have an idea for an alternative data source: local city or town governments. I know you’re in a completely different part of the world and things may be different there, but around here (central USA), many of the town and city government web sites include a link to a map that has all the buildings mapped. And it is not a Google map. However, I’ve never tried to contact them for permission to use this data, so I don’t know what they would say.