16.02.23 - Data Science to Complete and verify the time period of construction of buildings

Completing and verifying the time period of construction of buildings in the official register of buildings and dwellings by using data science: a co-creation project has just been completed with the canton of Valais to help the communes that are responsible for updating this register.

The idea was to apply a detection algorithm on the basis of national maps, updated about every 6 years over a period going back to 1950.

This solution does not allow to fully automate the process, but provides a valuable help to the update. It also allows the detection of anomalies in the existing data.

The tedious search in the archives is thus facilitated thanks to these algorithms which provide an initial information that can be verified and validated. The project has allowed to determine a construction period for 220'000 buildings on the whole Valais territory.

This project demonstrates the relevance of making historical data of the territory easily accessible (we use the term 4D data to integrate the dimension of time) and the advantages of applying methods based on data science (which has its limits) not to replace manual work, but to facilitate this task of updating and increasing the quality of the information.

The methodology and the associated code are freely available on the Swiss Territorial Data Lab (STDL) website

#building #history #datascience #processimprovement