[Talk-GB] NSG NLPG LLPGs Re: Definitive source for UK streetnames? - OS, 'road name signs', or a council 'list'?

[Micah]

The data in the National Street Gazetteer (NSG) is owned by Local Government 
Information House (LGIH) on behalf of the local authorities.
A commercial operation Intelligent Addressing
manages the data and runs infrastructure to maintain it:
http://www.intelligent-addressing.co.uk/

The local authorities can justify the money spent on maintaining their own 
Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) which feeds in to NSG as less than it 
saved in increase efficiencies by avoiding duplicating maintain multiple 
address datasets across departments, so saves council tax. 

Local Authorities also have duties to be responsible for Street Naming & 
Numbering with local guidelines to be enforced for new streets.

https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbwssl.cgi?Gw=Street+Naming+%26+Numbering

I think they should give up trying to gain additional revenue by trying to 
sell it, and release all they can to be free-ly reused.

Others do too:

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/unlocking-service/2008/12/05/NationalStreetGazetteer

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/unlocking-service/CategoryView/category/NLPG/

but will those voices outweigh those with vesting interest as re-sellers:

http://www.aligned-
assets.co.uk/news/2010/Aligned_Assets_bring_NLPG_affordability_to_smaller_organisations_through_Software_By_Subscription.html

http://www.nlpg.org.uk/


Given the quite right rebuff to the idea of a 'correct' street name later in 
this this thread there is also the mistakes that will be in the NSG itself. A 
dataset only gets more accurate if it has good feedbacks to correct it, and 
these generally increase with use.


Could we ever build an open replacement for the National Land and Property 
Gazetteer (NLPG) & the Royal Mail's Postcode Address File (PAF)?

Well we can try:
http://openaddresses.org/

cheers,

Micah Bunny
--
http://blog.j12.org/



On Friday 06 Aug 2010 14:36:46 Lester Caine wrote:
> Jason Cunningham wrote:
> > Just read through a short discussion about differences in street names
> > in OSM and 'OS Locator', and problems caused by differences in names
> > given The classic problem is where the road street sign says something
> > like 'Dukes Drive' but OS locator states Duke's Drive.
> > Noticed that common view was OSM mapped what was on the ground, so road
> > sign name was added.
> > 
> > Having come across roads where road names differ on adjacent roads
> > signs, I'm not too sure road signs can be 100% relied on, but OS also
> > clearly make mistakes.
> > Has anyone heard of how this problem is dealt with by authorities (eg
> > councils) as they seem to rely on OS as a definitive source for mapping
> > data.
> 
> The councils will be be working to the street table in their LLPG data, and
> it is that which is supplied TO OS as the 'correct' local information.
> There is even a mechanism for advising changes and new streets in the
> update format. The one thing that is worth noting in this is that POSTCODE
> is not a requirement in this data, only the NLPG references. Of cause what
> is more anoying is that while we all pay to create the data via our
> council tax, http://www.thensg.org.uk/ is owned by a commercial operation
> that then makes money out of it :(