[Talk-ca] Crowdsourcing buildings with Statistics Canada

Sat Aug 6 23:22:49 UTC 2016

The postcode battle is being fought on the Open Data side.   There is an
open data mailing list whose name escapes me where they have been playing
for years to get the postcode data including access to information requests.

Tracy at Carleton University is well connected on the Open Data side and
the postcode saga.  There is some hope now that the UK post office has made
the UK ones available.

For the moment many commercial companies do list their postcode on their
web sites and the the commercial buildings that are the ones of interest to
Stats Canada.

I suspect Bjenk will have fun when he checks his email on Monday morning
when he arrives in the office.  We've been quite chatty over the weekend.

Cheerio John

On 6 Aug 2016 7:02 pm, "Laura O'Grady" <laura at lauraogrady.ca> wrote:

> There's a form [1] requesting this data set. Not sure if posting a request
> will help as we know this has been going on for years.
>
> You can get the Forward Sortation Areas in a boundary file [2], which can
> be exported from the db. I noticed the disclaimer, "This data includes
> information copied with permission from Canada Post Corporation". But of
> course this is incomplete. I wonder if it's the latter 3 characters,
> the Local Delivery Unit, which can pinpoint to individual households is
> being suppressed for privacy reasons.
>
> As an academic we battled Stats Can for years for access to data that was
> paid for by taxpayer dollars. Eventually we won. So there's a precedent of
> sorts.
>
> Has anyone tried filing a freedom of information request for the postal
> codes?
>
> Laura
>
> -
> Laura O'Grady
> laura at lauraogrady.ca
>
>
> [1] http://open.canada.ca/en/suggested-datasets/postal-code-database
> [2] https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/
> geo/bound-limit/bound-limit-2011-eng.cfm
>
> On Aug 6, 2016, at 2:12 PM, john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I understand the current intent is data.gc.ca
>
> There is actually a lot of postcode data in Ottawa adhresses as it stands
> especially for commercial buildings.  Don't hold your breath for Canada
> Post and postcodes.
>
> Some attributes they would like at the moment I can't see how a mapper
> would map them from physically looking at the building.
>
> If nothing else it should clean up the map.  For that reason it would be
> nice to be able to pull chunks into JOSM and go over it looking for obvious
> errors and spelling mistakes in tags.  Maperitive has the ability to
> extract the tags and export them in spreadsheet format which is good for
> this sort of thing but you need a source to feed it.
>
>
> Cheerio John
>
> On 6 August 2016 at 12:38, Stewart C. Russell <scruss at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi John - some great points here.
>>
>> > My understanding is currently he’s looking getting hold of the City of
>> > Ottawa building outline data and making it available to OpenStreetMap
>> > without the current license restriction.
>>
>> This would be wonderful. It would be ideal if the data could be placed
>> on data.gc.ca and use the OGL-CA v2 licence. OSM can't use any data
>> under the City of Ottawa Open Data - Terms of use
>> <http://ottawa.ca/en/mobile-apps-and-open-data/open-data-terms-use>. I
>> also have my doubts about the acceptability of the Statistics Canada
>> Open Licence Agreement <http://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/reference/licence>.
>> OGL-CA v2, though, we know to be acceptable.
>>
>> Also, if there were to be an import, we *must* follow the
>> Import/Guidelines
>> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines> or risk having
>> any new imports deleted. The recent LA building import provides a decent
>> template, but there are no imports without the Data Working Group having
>> knowledge of it.
>>
>> [** Bjenk: if all this seems gibberish, please ping me off-list, and I'd
>> be happy to have a chat. Despite my previous flippant comments, I think
>> this is a great project.]
>>
>> To some more of John's points:
>>
>> > He’s also asking for the building outline to be tagged with the address
>> > including postcode.  Which is interesting as currently each node of
>> > store within a building might have part of the address.
>>
>> For sure. I looked at the City of Ottawa data, and getting it to mesh
>> with existing address points and ranges in OSM is going to be challenging:
>>
>> * fixing street naming to meet OSM standards (so Ottawa's 991 CARLING
>> AVE would have to become addr:housenumber=991 and addr:street=Carling
>> Avenue). Not impossible, but would need some manual oversight
>>
>> * Inconsistent application of French to some street names, English to
>> others, and no obvious metadata to distinguish language
>>
>> * some buildings in mixed-use neighbourhoods will have multiple address
>> points, all containing the same address (eg St Stephen's on Parkdale Ave
>> has three 579 Parkdale Ave nodes)
>>
>> * some buildings just plain don't have address points nearby (like the
>> Agri-Food Canada Building on Carling Ave)
>>
>> * rationalizing address points with existing address ranges.
>>
>> And then there's the postal code problem. If Stat Canada can bring us a
>> licence-compatible data set of full codes that Canada Post *won't* try
>> to sue us over, that would be glorious. I'm not sure we could get enough
>> traction with the general Canadian public to do the "Free the Postcode"
>> initiative like in the UK to make this useful as a crowdsourcing effort.
>>
>> > … One problem I see arising is a new mapper mapping to the
>> > Stats Canada guide lines using iD changes one or more existing tags.  I
>> > do a fair amount of validation in HOT and some newer mappers either
>> > completely ignore or misunderstand the instructions.
>>
>> Yes, this can be a problem with newer mappers. There would need to be a
>> careful data quality metric, but also an understanding that unpaid,
>> crowdsourced data may always have errors.
>>
>> Big project. Genuine opportunities for learning and value on all sides.
>>
>> cheers,
>>  Stewart
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Talk-ca mailing list
>> Talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-ca mailing list
> Talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ca/attachments/20160806/3e1477cc/attachment-0001.html>