Alternatives to Google Street View

[misaugstad]

Brief description of problem/feature

Over the years, we've talked about switching to (or more likely adding additional support for) imagery datasets other than Google Street View (GSV). We have one such ticket specifically for Mapillary (#3599). I figured that we should start compiling some of those option in a thread on Github instead of them showing up in Slack as transient! Some recent ones that we've talked about:

• Infra3D, and @jsomeara is working on integrating their API into PS!
• Mapillary (Utilizing Mapillary (in addition to or instead of) GSV #3599)
• KartaView
• Mosaic (demo dataset available from this link at time of writing)
• footpath.ai (imagery from the sidewalk instead of the street)

Some of the benefits of other data sources could be:

• A more permissive license, allowing us to upload data to OSM or share the data more broadly in other ways
• The inclusion of depth data for more accurate geo-location and additional features (like determining sidewalk width)
• Inclusion of user-contributed photos more easily
• Similarly, some datasets may have better coverage or newer coverage in some areas

[jonfroehlich]

Thanks for adding this. I spoke with Maeed from footpath.ai (founder) at our UrbanAccess'24 workshop and he said he would give us access (they'd have to create an academic license for us).

[jonfroehlich]

Evidently, the DC Department of Public Works captures every street in DC with the Mapillary Android app during autumn evidently to track leaf collection!

From the Mapillary Blog.

This year DPW inspectors used the latest version of the Mapillary Android App for street-level imagery collection. 25 inspectors collected street-level imagery in their assigned locations and uploaded images to Mapillary daily. All collected imagery is uploaded to DC DPW’s Mapillary organization profile by each inspector to provide insight to decision makers and to update the status of leaf collection on DPW’s Leaf Collection Status Map.

DC DPW GIS officers use Mapillary’s ArcGIS Pro add-in to monitor how their roads look both before and after leaf cleaning and to make better decisions regarding leaf collection strategies. DC DPW can easily access multiple images taken at a specific point over a specified time frame and share updates with residents.

See: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mapillary_do-you-know-that-dc-department-of-public-activity-7268305421386321920-fq27/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios