[OSM-talk-be] Addresses in Belgium

[Glenn Plas]

>     PS: I'm using a lot of geocoding when I truly mean 'reverse
>     geocode',   I only focus in getting full addresses back from
>     coordinates.
>
>
> That's probably the main difference. I focus on geocoding (getting 
> coordinates from an address). And when you have long streets without 
> housenumbers, Nominatim will give a result, but the result can easily 
> be 20 km off.  Which is really unacceptable. As you don't know how 
> long the street is, you can only assume that you have the correct 
> place when the housenumber is found.
20 Km is unacceptable, but It's probably partly the fault of nominatim 
code itself, I've been doing plenty of mods and the way it finds 
(geocode) places is pretty complicated.  I'm not saying incorrect but it 
sure is huge (try forking it on github to find out).   And it's based on 
getting USA/GB address types in general. Which means, when we deviate a 
bit from the 'current' de facto standard that nominatim uses, we get 
less accurate results.   That doesn't mean it's not in OSM data.

I've been playing a lot with the idea of creating a light-weight 
geocoder api on top of Gazetteer.   It also always intruiged me why I 
was unable to get a postcode (but I did get a city) in a reverse geocode 
on my own servers (at one point I installed enough gazetteers to know 
the procedure by heart).  But the public one did find postal codes.  I 
always used all their docs for my own installs.  That triggered me to 
patch the result set and include postal codes by name and distance 
(coordinates as a source helps). Which turned problematic in 
Brussels/Antwerp sometimes.   But the customers didn't really care if it 
was 1 code off.
>
> So that's what I meant with the "1 in 40" statement.
In that sense, you are probably right.  You need to know how to feed 
keywords in the correct order in the search page.   In google you can 
pretty much slam anything in it whatever the order, but they probably 
use a 1000 of their nodes at once to figure that out.

>
> And I agree that the data is becoming better and better. When I 
> started, my own street wasn't on the map (this triggered me). Now the 
> street network is good as complete (we even have streets in the DB 
> that are still under construction). So we need to focus on other 
> things. Those things are (according to me):

I love to add those under constructions, I check the site of my 
municipality frequently for their names etc.   I love to remap places 
that have recently been reconstructed, like the R6 in 
Mechelen/Sint-Katelijne-Waver for example.  It took a year for google to 
catch up.  That's how I push people into mapping or make customers aware 
that their name is on that map because I put it there.  They absolutely 
love that stuff.

>
>   * Addresses including housenumbers
>   * POI's including extra information s.a. opening hours
>   * Extra info on roads (maxspeed, lanes ...)
>
agreed with all.   The easiest way I find to add addresses/street info is;
  - know the place
  - put all merchants in it ('zelfstandigen', bakery, chinese food, 
vending machines).   Use their site or the municipality to find the 
addresses, every place does that with the small shops.   They won't mind 
this at all, in fact, they love the exposure.  And it's an official list 
and you can use it, it is public information by nature.
  - Just start with what you know.  Try finding bread here in the area 
at night, only for that reason I add all those vending machines so I can 
follow the android in my quest for food ;-)
> I just wanted to see how our addresses are evolving, as a result of 
> the other blog posts.and it wasn't that hard to get some indicative 
> numbers.
It's useful exercise, which I applaud.  Only at the very end of my 
initial reaction I started to realise the 'reverse geocoding' fact isn't 
typical use for everyone ;-)

In that sense, there is a german oriented plugin to add maxspeed/road 
signs to JOSM. It's a great tool and a way to put some standards in.  It 
has a way to customize, I did like 5% of it to map road signs.  It 
supports mapping it on a way and just signs next to the road( less 
useful imho).   'road signs plugin' it's called.   So I'm trying to make 
a Belgian version, in the recent road signs discussion this could prove 
useful for extra quality.

Mvg,

Glenn
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