A containing over 3 million buildings in photorealistic detail is now unlikely to reach the public because of a dispute between a UK government agency and Google.
Built by the Centre for Advanced Spatial Awareness (CASA) at University College London and integrated with free mapping software Google Earth, the model would have helped the public become involved in city planning, by showing how buildings fit in with the landscape before they are built. It would also have demonstrated the potential effects of global warming with a feature that showed rising waters flooding the virtual streets.
CASA used MasterMap, owned by Ordnance Survey, Great Britain鈥檚 national mapping agency, which details every fixed feature in the country larger than a few metres. This gave the team accurate footprints of all buildings inside the M25 motorway that encircles London. They then added virtual buildings to the map, using heights obtained with laser measurements, and lastly enhanced the model by adding realistic textures.
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Google had hoped to integrate the model with Google Earth and pay a fixed fee for MasterMap, arguing that the public would only see the visualisation, not the raw data. However, OS wanted to follow its usual terms, under which customers pay based on the number of people using the data.
Hopes were raised earlier this year when a map of heat loss over London, which uses MasterMap, appeared online. However, an OS statement this month dashed these hopes: 鈥淭here are differences in what Google wants and what our licensing framework permits that mean we have not been able to reach agreement.鈥� OS says that the heat-loss map is an exception because it is owned by a non-profit group. CASA鈥檚 Andrew Hudson-Smith disagrees: 鈥淭hey are going through a crisis and don鈥檛 know how to react to the Web 2.0 world.鈥�
Timothy Foresman, director-general of the fifth International Symposium on Digital Earth in San Francisco in June, fears that OS鈥檚 decision could set a precedent: 鈥淭he OS model is a dinosaur,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f the UK community doesn鈥檛 band together and make this a cause c茅l猫bre, then they will find the road is blocked as further uses [of the OS data] become known.鈥�
For now, the public will have to wait until Microsoft releases its own model as part of its software, which won鈥檛 rely on OS data. Meanwhile the UK-based OpenStreetMap project is encouraging people to make their own measurements and post them online, where they might then be used to create an online model. 鈥淥S will find that all the people they鈥檙e restricting will go and get the data for themselves and release it for free,鈥� says the project鈥檚 founder, Steve Coast.
鈥淧eople will go and get the map data for themselves and release it for free鈥�
CASA is also planning a model of London for Second Life, but Hudson-Smith says it won鈥檛 be as accurate as the contentious version.
