Crowdsourcing Contest for Digitally Capturing 'Building Footprints'

New Zealand's LINZ is giving Canterbury high-school students the chance to become even more actively and personally involved in the rebuild of their region – and to win prizes in the process. Run by LINZ – with Canterbury University and Environment Canterbury – 'Building Our Footprints' is a crowdsourcing contest aimed at digitally capturing 'building footprints' in Selwyn, Waimakariri and Christchurch.

Building footprints are 2D shapes of where buildings touch the ground.  Accurate footprints are used by councils in managing property information, and by emergency services, said LINZ Canterbury SDI programme manager Julian Carver. Selwyn and Waimakariri currently have few building footprints, and Christchurch lacks a complete set. There are manual and automated ways to capture these, but the cost of doing so can be significant – which is where crowdsourcing comes in, Carver added.

'Building Our Footprints' requires high-school students to map footprints in the three areas – with those accurately mapping the most winning such prizes as an iPad Mini, cash prizes for individuals and schools and 10 double movie passes. During the competition, students can log on to the website and capture as many building footprints as they like in any of the Selwyn, Waimakariri and Christchurch districts.

This allows Land Information New Zealand  to capture as much information as possible at a significantly reduced cost, while also offering students an authentic experience with geospatial technologies. Building footprints captured through the competition will be used by Canterbury councils and other GIS professionals – meaning that participating students are contributing vital information for our region, and also personally and directly contributing to the rebuild, Julian Carver concluded.

'Building Our Footprints' runs from 28 July-28 August. To enter, or for more information, see www.canterburymaps.govt.nz/buildingourfootprints.