Semi-automatic interpretation of buildings and settlement areas in user-generated spatial data

In recent times the amount of spatial data being collected by voluntary users, e.g. as part of the OpenStreetMap project, is rapidly increasing. Due to the fact, that everyone can participate in this social collaboration, the completeness and accuracy of the data is very heterogeneous. Although a object catalogue exists as part of the OSM project, users are not restricted which attributes they set and to which detail. Therefore the geometry of a feature is more reliable than its attributes. However, in order to use the data for analysis purposes, knowledge about the semantic contents is of importance.