Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data
I don't understand why this is needed. Here in Finland the government just gave this info out for free to anyone (CC 4.0). They have all the information anyway because they have need for it due to planning/building permits, defense, etc.<p>The data is very accurate (for example I can zoom into my parents cottage and see the out house on it). Later on they used laser scanning from planes to scan the whole country for very accurate topological map too.<p>The moment this information was released for free both OSM and Google Maps quality jumped a notch or two. Before this google maps only had roads but now it has small foot paths etc too.<p><a href="https://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/e-services/open-data-file-download-service" rel="nofollow">https://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/e-services/open-data-fil...</a>