[OSM-talk-be] Addresses in Belgium

[A.Pirard.Papou]

On 2012-12-22 15:23, Sander Deryckere wrote :
> ...
> Now, how many addresses would be missing. We can't assume Belgium has 
> 11 million addresses, as many people live together. So I searched 
> other data. The number of addresses in Belgium seems impossible to 
> find, but I did find the number of families in Belgium: 
> http://www.centrumvoorsociaalbeleid.be/indicatoren/index.php?q=node/176. 
> I assume that the number of addresses must be about the same. There 
> are addresses without families (like firms) and multiple families 
> living in one apartment with one address (but often different post 
> boxes).
bpost(of course) is maintaining a database of the number of mailboxes 
per distribution area, so that the people doing mass mailing, like 
printers, know how many mail items to provide.
It's free, but you need to subscribe here to access the service.
http://www.bpost.be/distripost/outil_de_reservation.html
http://www.bpost.be/distripost/reservatietool.html
This subscription, including receiving snail mail and a password, looks 
like the business status of the requester is verified.  I'll send by 
private e-mail to anyone requesting it within next week a more 
descriptive French text written by a user for his customers.  I could 
have a peek at the data and I can describe it as OSM valuable.

Also, I came across this file 
<http://www.theux.be/ma-commune/services-communaux/population-etat-civil/statistiques/s/12/hab-par-rue-010112.pdf>.  
I couldn't find the same for other municipalities, but it's format makes 
me think that it's data that each administration must or should maintain 
and that it could be available on request.  I could blast the PDF and 
get each street on one line of t.txt.
perl -ne 'print if s/(\d+)\/(\d+) (.*?)\s+(\d+)$/$1,$2,$3,$4/' t.txt > t.asc
did the rest and I pasted t.asc in a spreadsheet.
I made a additional column to contain the village/hamlet name and a 
simple SUMIF per area is adding up the persons count for each of them.

I welcome under this subject any feedback regarding both sources.

Given mailboxes and population counts, you might find that their ratio 
is fairly constant, maybe after separating mainly urban vs rural statistics.

> *How to map?*
>
> There's also a lot of armchair mapping that can be done. First of all, 
> all that streetnames that need to be added. People are better in 
> guessing the right streetname, and if there's doubt, just add a fixme tag.
I often do that and I had just did it the day before you wrote this.  
www.restaurant indicated 6, street X and when I curiously checked with 
GoogleMaps: it did not know the restaurant, located 6, street X very far 
away from there and called street X street Y.
Conclusion: beware: some people don't know where they are living!!! ;-)
> Next to that, if you see a restaurant on the map, without address 
> data, just search the website of that restaurant and get the address 
> data from there. You're doing nothing wrong, as long as you don't take 
> the data from a database (such as the golden pages), you aren't 
> violating any copyrights or database rights. While you're at the 
> website of the restaurant, you can also add other information s.a. 
> opening hours or phone number.
The scrupulous mind can get the number from the YP and phone the 
restaurant to ask them their phone number.  Or you can learn the YP by 
heart, and do the mapping two days after.  Or ask your wife to look it 
up and phone it to the neighbor; he will probably phone back and ask 
what's going on there.  Lots of ©less methods ;-)

I usually refrain from indicating phone numbers. There are already so 
many problems with web addresses changes that could be easily detected 
but are not cared for, that it's useless to add phone number changes 
that cannot be detected.  I would give priority to pop up a tip when the 
mouse hovers over the restaurant with a Web link to click to see the 
rest.  I drew the attention of JOSM preset writers that a Web address is 
often much wider that what's usually called a Contact.

Happy Xmas, be it in street X or Y.

André.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-be/attachments/20121223/8aee57e0/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: logo_bpost_landing.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 24903 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-be/attachments/20121223/8aee57e0/attachment.jpg>