Roofing Material Dataset?

Datasets
#1

Hi,

I’m currently working on my thesis regarding the automatic identification of roofing materials using a fusion of aerial photography and LiDAR datasets, and I was wondering if anyone knew whether something like a Dutch register of addresses and roofing materials exists at all. For instance, I’d like to know that the roof of the building at address X is made of material Y (e.g. asphalt shingles). I don’t need a national or even very expansive dataset so something on a municipal or even city-block level would suffice.

This information would help me train a classifier without introducing too much noise into the final model or spending too much time labelling so it’s not really necessary, but would still be valuable nonetheless.

Thanks.

#2

Buildings in OpenStreetMap have tags (I think “roof_material”) for this. They can be set using the Street Complete app, so you might find an area in NL where some OSM fan has mapped all the roof types.

I know the Red Cross did map those after hurricane Irma stroke Sint Maarten, and that data is in OSM as well. But that is probably not useful for you since it’s another location and other imagery, and many roofs will have been replaced since then.

#3

Hi, Raymond.

Thanks for replying.

I didn’t know that OSM had this feature. It certainly sounds promising given that I can actually find some data on there.

While it’s true that my focus is on NL, data from other countries and regions with similar building characteristics and materials (e.g. BE, DE, USA) are also technically suitable for my purposes. Although, timeliness is always important, as you point out…