— from San Juan County Communications —
For hundreds of years, humans have used maps for navigating to new worlds, charting unknown locations and recording histories. Today, the county uses building footprints in maps for dispatching emergency responders, planning land use designations, appraising property values and designing proper infrastructure. County maps are also used by real-estate professionals, delivery companies, transportation providers, developers and construction companies. As communities grow and infrastructure changes, maps need to be updated.
Building footprints are simple outlines of the exterior walls of buildings. Usually they are traced from building plans or aerial imagery and include eaves and overhangs. The county has two sources of building footprint maps. One source is hand-traced and has not be updated in several years. The second source was more recently traced using proprietary software without human input. We’ve studied some of the results of both sources and determined that one source is not always better than the other. So we need to compare each footprint one by one. With 18,000 footprints, this is no small task.
We are asking for your help in reviewing our footprint data. Use the Footprint Review Website to compare and select the better building footprint. Review and vote often to unlock “achievements” and brag to your friends. Your votes are tallied and saved and will be published in the final maps. The final footprint data will also be published on the County website.
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I started the review, and initially made a few errors myself: it’s hard to tell if a swimming pool or patio is part of the structure of the house, as well as whether a side addition is connected to the main building (as in my first example.) I found I could enlarge or diminish the size, hopefully to see it better, but it doesn’t seem to work right. Also, on the website, couldn’t find who to ask about these things. Also, are you saying that, even though we help correct these footprints, the actual building may now be different?
Help!!
Hi Margot. Thanks for your comments! Sorry I did not include contact information for the website. Trees, shadows and small buildings can all make for difficult determinations. I’d suggest you “Skip” buildings you cannot be sure of. The aerial photos on the website were taken in 2013. It’s certainly possible that some buildings have been remodeled since then, too.
If anyone has other questions, please email me at sjcgis@sanjuanco.com.