Vertical Aerial Photographs

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  • Vertical Aerial Photographs
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Although the title refers to them as photographs, modern imaging technologies are far more advanced than traditional photographic techniques. While commonly referred to as photographs by the general public, a more accurate term is something like orthorectified north-up celestial images, captured from drones, aircraft, or satellites. The term aerial typically refers to imagery collected by drones or aircraft. Satellites, on the other hand, operate outside the atmosphere and are therefore more accurately described as orbital.

These images are valuable sources of data for OpenStreetMap (OSM). Although survey is a key method for collecting data, tracing features from orthorectified images allows for large amounts of information to be added more quickly. This can later be verified and refined through on-the-ground surveys. A couple of early examples of OSM data initiated through image tracing include the Gaza Strip and Baghdad. The Humanitarian OSM Team frequently uses aerial or satellite imagery for disaster response efforts.

These images are most commonly captured by satellites. Companies such as Maxar, Airbus, and Planet, as well as government programs like Landsat and Sentinel, provide satellite imagery either for free or under licensing agreements. However, licensing terms are often too restrictive for OpenStreetMap use, or the image resolution may not meet the needs of mappers. Below are some sources currently in active use.

Aerial images can also be obtained from drones, airplanes equipped with cameras, balloons, or any airborne device fitted with a camera, see Creating your own aerial photos.

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Only use sources which OpenStreetMap have explicit permission or have a compatible license or are out of copyright (often difficult to determine). [1]

Sources already in use

Bing

In November 2010, Bing (Microsoft) gave us special permission to use their imagery to create our maps. It is supported in iD, Potlatch 3 and JOSM. See the Bing page for details.

(Tracing source attribution is usually done as source=Bing (⅔ of the usage) or source=bing (⅓ of usage)).

Maxar / MapBox

Published 09 April, 2014 DigitalGlobe (now called Maxar) in partnering with MapBox have given the permission (see MapBox ToS) to use their imagery provided through MapBox Satellite service to be used for OSM tracing purposes. The imagery is available in iD and JOSM, among others. The resulution varies between zoom level 12-17 (world coverage) down to zoom 19 (in selected parts of U.S. and Europe, and smaller areas everywhere).

(Tracing source attribution is not compulsory[1] but always a good practice; used tags are mostly source=digitalglobe and MapBox suggested source=mapbox. [Usage as of 2013-05 are: digitalglobe 241k, mapbox 11k, MapBox 8k, DigitalGlobe 5k, DigitalGlobe / Mapbox 2k.])

Esri Worldview Imagery

On Aug 21 2017, Esri announced availability of satellite imagery to the OSM community directly through their existing World Imagery Service. See the dedicated page here.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Aerial Imagery was used between 2007 and 2011. In september 2011 Yahoo partially shut down their service and partially changed their imagery source which resulted that the imagery is no longer useable for tracing purposes, as we have no permission to do so.

Imagery source indexes

The OSM Editor Layer Index project maintains an index of imagery sources that may be traced in OSM.

  • The iD editor derives its imagery sources from that index.[2]
  • The JOSM editor maintains its own index (but can also be configured to use the editor-layer-index).

Possible sources

OpenAerialMap

Visit https://www.openaerialmap.org for images from the contributors. Even users select licenses not compatible with OSM, they agree the images to be used to edit OSM while uploading. See the text here:

"""

By submitting imagery to OpenAerialMap, you agree to place your imagery into the Open Imagery Network (OIN)

Except when permitted by the OpenStreetMap exception (see below), all imagery contained in OIN is licensed CC-BY 4.0, with attribution as "© OIN contributors", and specific additional SA/NC conditions if selected upon upload.

IMPORTANT NOTICE - OPENSTREETMAP EXCEPTION: You agree that users do not have to comply with the selected license when the imagery is used for tracing in OpenStreetMap. In these cases, you agree that the derived data from the imagery is made available under the ODBL license.

"""

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team mostly uses Maxar Open Data Program images through OpenAerialMap. Although Maxar publish data with CC-BY NC 4.0 license, they add a specific term as a waiver for OSM here.

Landsat

https://www.mapbox.com/bites/00113/

Astro Digital

Download Landsat imagery https://astrodigital.com/

Organisation / Heritage / History

Sources that are governmental, historical or otherwise assumed not for profit.

The interface is easy, but you may be confused because there's no actual photos online - it's just a catalogue of the photos, which then have to be bought from the University. They started taking photos in 1947, so I assume some are out of copyright by now. They're also mostly of open countryside, and have a restricted field of view, as far as I can tell, so may not be much use anyway.
The interface has been replaced with a new slippy map viewer (and an OSM background) using code cloned from CycleStreets! Photographs not viewable on the site - see the info page for updates. - Martin (I work at Geography)

USGS

Costs money

Outside of UK

Africa

Australia

Austria

France

  • Brest métropole océane This is covered by the by-nc-sa creative commons license.
  • IGN BDOrtho is available since May 2016 for editing purpose.
  • Raw aerial photos by IGN which can be downloaded here are under the licence "public information that is freely reusable". ATTENTION this is very different from the orthophoto which is visible in Géoportail: that one is not free and under copyright. The difference is the georeferencing: the raw aerial photos must be rotated and displaced to fit with existing data, whereas the orthophoto is ready to use. In slopy terrain, the aerial photos should even be rectified to fit with the terrain model, which would require some knowledge of photogrammetry techniques and specific software.

Germany

A list of WMS-sources and links for integration JOSM and potlatch can be found here:[5] and here Germany/Luftbilder

Italy

The national portal of cartography, operated by the ministry for environment, offers good aerial imagery to trace from covering the whole country (2006) and newer ones for the regions of Lazio and Umbria (2008). More information in Italian here: Italy/PCN. The links to enter in JOSM are:

  • 2006, all of Italy:
http://wms.pcn.minambiente.it/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=/ms_ogc/service/ortofoto_colore_06.map&LAYERS=ortofoto_colore_06_32,ortofoto_colore_06_33&REQUEST=GetMap&VERSION=1.1.1&FORMAT=image%2Fjpeg&FORMAT=image%2Fpng&
  • 2008, Lazio and Umbria:
http://wms.pcn.minambiente.it/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=/ms_ogc/service/ortofoto_colore_08.map&LAYERS=ortofoto_colore&REQUEST=GetMap&VERSION=1.1.1&FORMAT=image%2Fpng&

Glossary

Oblique
Oblique aerial photos are photos that are taken from the air but are not vertical. I assume these ones won't be much use for the image base.
Vertical
Vertical (or near vertical) are what we need for the image base.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Based on email exchanges with AJ@MapBox
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