<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div>I work in the Uitilities/Billing industry and do a reasonable amount of work in addressing quality (in order to get lower USPS rates with things like the Intelligent Mail Barcoder and suchlike). I'd just like to throw a couple of things in to enhance the discussion.</div><div><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">1. In 90<span style="background-color: transparent;">% of cases in the US, The physical address (which can be found using a reverse geocode) is the Postal Address. Obvious areas of difference are:</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">a. PO
Boxes</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">b. Rural Areas where there is no mail delivery. But in this case, the Physical address can be found using a reverse geocode.</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">2. In an earlier part of the thread, someone mentioned PO Boxes. These are <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mailing Addresses</span> not physical addresss. The distinction is important.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">3. Importantly - </span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px;
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"> a. Both Google and Openstreetmap don't know anything about actual addresses in the US. For reverse geocode purposes, they just guess based on the approximate lat/long location.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"> b. An easy example to show you is this - A search for "6188 South Poplar St, Centennial. CO" in both google and openstreetmap will both return results - Google will even give you a Streetview. But that property simply doesn't exist. It never has/</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span
style="background-color: transparent;"> c. If you go to USPS, </span><a href="https://tools.usps.com/go/POLocatorAction.action" style="font-size: 10pt;">https://tools.usps.com/go/POLocatorAction.action</a> <span style="background-color: transparent;">they know that it doesn't exist. This is the address quality that USPS supplies.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">USPS provides an easy to understand, comprehensive addressing method that would allow </span><span style="background-color: transparent;">OSM to provide a consistent addressing methodology to addresses.
For example, An armchair mapper might map an address like North Caley as North Caley, Nort Caley NTH Caley or N Caley. (These are the most common ways by the way for manually entered addresses).</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">The only reverse 911 addresses I have provided are validated USPS addresses.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px;
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">If the USPS standard was applied to addressing (and it is a standard that everyone in the US knows and understands) then OSM would be gain a leap in addressing quality. In fact, I would imagine that 75% of the work could be done by Bots</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">There are plenty of tools that the USPS supplies to enhance address quality.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica,
sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="https://www.usps.com/business/manage-address-quality.htm">https://www.usps.com/business/manage-address-quality.htm</a><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">Hope this helps the discussion</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br></div><div
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">Mark</div><div><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br></div> <div style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> <div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <font size="2" face="Arial"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Bryce Nesbitt <bryce2@obviously.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> talk-us@openstreetmap.org <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Saturday, June 22, 2013 4:05
PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Talk-us] what do we mean by geocoding?<br> </font> </div> <div class="y_msg_container"><br><div id="yiv0759898619"><br><br><div class="yiv0759898619gmail_quote">On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 6:47 PM, Richard Welty <span dir="ltr"><<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:rwelty@averillpark.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:rwelty@averillpark.net">rwelty@averillpark.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="yiv0759898619gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="yiv0759898619im"><blockquote class="yiv0759898619gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> Surveying postal addresses by opening mailboxes (illegal) or knocking on doors doesn't seem feasible.<br>
<br>
</blockquote></div>
but the enhanced 911 addresses are basically the same as the postal<br>
addresses and have the potential to become available. i'm working on<br>
that in my part of upstate NY.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>e911 is a very hopeful source for OSM: high quality coding would be huge.</div><div>For good background, read: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireline_enhanced_911">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireline_enhanced_911</a></div>
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