[Geocoding] Local Nominatim instance incorrectly geocoding locations in Escondido, CA USA

[Sarah Hoffmann]

Hi John,

On Thu, Apr 02, 2015 at 11:10:59AM -0400, John Shimer wrote:
> About 3 months ago I set up a local instance of Nominatim 2.3.1 with
> a scope of North America. In general things are going quite well,
> but I have recently run into an issue that I can't seem to resolve.
> 
> All geocoding and reverse geocoding queries involving locations
> within Escondido, CA, will not return Escondido, CA in the address.
> Nearby hamlets like Ponderosa Club Mobile Home Park, are returned
> instead. For example...

The geometry for the city was broken. I've fixed it now:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/29938976

> the query - 545 West Washington Avenue, Escondido, CA  (33.124267,
> -117.091156)
> returns - 545, West Washington Avenue, Ponderosa Club Mobile Home
> Park, San Diego County, California, 92025, United States of America.

If you were actually searching for Escondido on nominatim.osm.org
and then check the details, you'll see that the city is broken there,
too: http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=127727720

The best way to track down such problems is Geofabrik's OSM Inspector.
You can see the error in the boundary about here:

http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=multipolygon&lon=-116.99296&lat=33.10713&zoom=15&overlays=invalid_geometry_hull,duplicate_ways,intersections,intersection_lines,ring_not_closed_hull,ring_not_closed,unconnected_end_nodes,touching_inner_rings_hull,touching_inner_rings,ways,role_markers,way_end_nodes,way_nodes

> If I go out to the Openstreetmap Nominatim instance, the correct
> result with a city name of Escondido is returned. I noticed that the
> geometry of the Escondido city relation in the OSM data base is
> rather complex, but it looks correct to me.

I'm not quite sure why the results differ but it can happen with
broken geometries when the updates are done at slightly different
times.

> I've already tried reimporting/reindexing the city relation, but
> that does not seem to help.

Reimporting and reindexing should solve the issue now that the
relation is fixed. Note that the normal updates won't be able to catch the
change, you really have to manually reimport with
./utils/update.php --import-relation 253827 --index

Sarah

Sarah