# To use or not to use proprietary street view images in (health and place) research? That is the question

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11504 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11504/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 0 of its 20 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Feb 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Coverage and Bias of Street View Imagery in Mapping the Urban Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15386/) (2024)
- [A citizen science toolkit to collect human perceptions of urban environments using open street view images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.00174/) (2024)
- [OpenFACADES: An Open Framework for Architectural Caption and Attribute Data Enrichment via Street View Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02866/) (2025)
- [ZenSVI: An Open-Source Software for the Integrated Acquisition, Processing and Analysis of Street View Imagery Towards Scalable Urban Science](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18641/) (2024)
- [Privacy of Groups in Dense Street Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07085/) (2025)
- [Automated Building Heritage Assessment Using Street-Level Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11486/) (2025)
- [Vehicle detection from GSV imagery: Predicting travel behaviour for cycling and motorcycling using Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12794/) (2025)
- [MMLANDMARKS: a Cross-View Instance-Level Benchmark for Geo-Spatial Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17492/) (2025)
- [Using street view images and visual LLMs to predict heritage values for governance support: Risks, ethics, and policy implications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06056/) (2025)
- [A Contrastive Learning Framework Empowered by Attention-based Feature Adaptation for Street-View Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16590/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Computer vision-based analysis of street view imagery has transformative impacts on environmental assessments. Interactive web services, particularly Google Street View, play an ever-important role in making imagery data ubiquitous. Despite the technical ease of harnessing millions of Google Street View images, this article questions the current practices in using this proprietary data source from a European viewpoint. Our concern lies with Google's terms of service, which restrict bulk image downloads and the generation of street view image-based indices. To reconcile the challenge of advancing society through groundbreaking research while maintaining data license agreements and legal integrity, we believe it is crucial to 1) include an author's statement on using proprietary street view data and the directives it entails, 2) negotiate academic-specific license to democratize Google Street View data access, and 3) adhere to open data principles and utilize open image sources for future research.