[Talk-GB] UK Postcodes

Tue Oct 4 14:26:48 UTC 2016

> Dealing with postcodes is done by Nominatim. Perhaps people might like to
consider contributing to the code base to make this possible (see for
instance <https://github.com/twain47/Nominatim/issues/541>).

Thanks for the pointer. I didn't realise it was an open issue with them.

Regards,
*Paul*

On 4 October 2016 at 13:22, SK53 <sk53.osm at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dealing with postcodes is done by Nominatim. Perhaps people might like to
> consider contributing to the code base to make this possible (see for
> instance <https://github.com/twain47/Nominatim/issues/541>).
>
> The Irish community run their own Nominatim instance which:
>
> a) is easier to maintain as the dataset is smaller
> and b) is used to check broken polygon objects (through reporting those
> which change in size considerably between updates).
>
> Jerry
>
>
>
> On 4 October 2016 at 12:52, Paul Berry <pmberry2007 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In the light of recent talk about postcode coverage, I've started mapping
>> with postal_code the highways that front groups of buildings known to have
>> the same postcode. However, that's in turn led me to notice that OSM still
>> uses NPEMap as a reference for postcode searches. Given that NPEMap
>> themselves declare this data as no longer being updated (since October 2015
>> from what I can gather) why does OSM still link there?
>>
>> Also, shouldn't OSM be looking inwards to its own data first (or some
>> aggregator service that provides this), then falling back to next-best
>> services like NPEMap for secondary results?
>>
>> The upshot is none of the postcodes I've added (as addr:postcode and
>> postal_code) in nearly three years of edits to OSM show up in a search,
>> other than the best-guessing of AB12 3## format, which is a bit
>> discouraging.
>>
>> Is there a plan to resolve this or am I missing something?
>>
>> Regards,
>> *Paul*
>>
>>
>> On 26 September 2016 at 14:29, SK53 <sk53.osm at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I just re-read a post
>>> <http://sk53-osm.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/british-postcodes-on-openstreetmap.html>
>>> I wrote nearly 3 years ago. I think a lot of it holds true today, so I've
>>> copied the main points here :
>>>
>>>
>>>    1. The simplest, but not necessarily the easiest target, is to map
>>>    at least one postcode in each postcode sector. This is harder than it
>>>    appears because obvious things to map in sparsely populated rural areas may
>>>    require surveys. For instance FHRS data has two B&Bs in Port Wemyss on
>>>    Islay, but the names are not shown on the OS Open Data StreetView.
>>>    Similarly a degree of caution must be exercised on farms in the Rhinns of
>>>    Islay and on the Oa because individual farmsteads may include two or three
>>>    properties (perhaps all owned by the same extended family, but nonetheless
>>>    distinct.
>>>
>>>    2. Achieve 5% completion. This reflects a DOUBLING of current
>>>    postcode data, and therefore must be regarded as ambitious. This is
>>>    however, the minimum condition for breaking the back of the postcode
>>>    problem. I believe with a concerted effort we could achieve this in 3
>>>    months, using conventional crowd-sourcing techniques.
>>>
>>>    3. Achieve 10% completion. A second doubling will probably require
>>>    more tool based support. The obvious targets are semi-automated matching of
>>>    FHRS & Land Registry data, and semi-automated identification of single
>>>    postcode streets.
>>>
>>>    4. Postcodes along major roads (A & B roads). These may require some
>>>    survey work, but again because many retail outlets are along such roads
>>>    there is already a decent amount of information available from FHRS.
>>>
>>> This was December 2013, so perhaps 5% and 10% should be nearer 10% and
>>> 20%. I don't have up-to-date figures but back in May 2015 we had 73,372
>>> full well-formed postcodes for GB (not whole of UK) which is still under
>>> 5%. These were located in just under 8000 postcode sectors (out of a total
>>> of 12,300 or so, with another 1000 populated in the last year). FHRS data
>>> has information on nearly 250k postcodes (inc NI) and 10k distinct postcode
>>> sectors. All these figures are based on raw strings, i.e., not checked if
>>> valid or in the right place. We still have thousands of schools mapped
>>> without postcode (even some where ref_edubase was added) so this is another
>>> fairly easy target.
>>>
>>> The big difference from 3 years ago is that we have more people
>>> interested in creating tools to assist these processes: something where the
>>> 3 month timescale is better than a shorter one.
>>>
>>> We have needed to get more address data for some, but on its own it's
>>> not a very strong motivator. My hopes for making big progress with Land
>>> Registry data were dashed once OpenAddresses and Owen Boswara clarified the
>>> 3rd party content in the data, and similarly the OpenAddresses project
>>> finished without having much in the way of additional data to offer us. (I
>>> still believe that there's scope in their approach and they built some
>>> interesting tools, but it was predicated on already having a decent amount
>>> of usable open data). When one looks at the formidable success of BANO in
>>> France there must be scope for something similar in the UK.
>>>
>>> I'm going to try & update my PC completion maps for the UK. I have some
>>> now but I know I have lost data from filtering the gb file.
>>>
>>> Jerry
>>>
>>>
>>> On 26 September 2016 at 11:44, Brian Prangle <bprangle at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It looks like the next UK Quarterly Project will be based on improving
>>>> address data for town centres using the food hygiene dataset. Why don't we
>>>> have a push generally on postcodes too, not limiting it to town centres?
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>>
>>>> Brian
>>>>
>>>> On 26 September 2016 at 11:25, David Woolley <
>>>> forums at david-woolley.me.uk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 26/09/16 10:19, Owen Boswarva wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> That could be done but it's not straightforward; you'll get a lot of
>>>>>> overlapping postcode sectors and sectors with non-contiguous parts.
>>>>>> GeoLytix produced an open dataset like that some time ago:
>>>>>> http://blog.geolytix.net/tag/postcode-boundaries/
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> In my view, inferring polygons is something that should only be done
>>>>> in the data consumer, as they involve creating data that cannot be
>>>>> justified from the input data.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 26 September 2016 at 09:39, Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl
>>>>>> <mailto:colin.smale at xs4all.nl>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>     How about deriving polygons for the postcode sector level (XX9 9)
>>>>>>     from the centroid point cloud, and adding the polygons to OSM? I
>>>>>>     don't know how many that would give, but it would be a whole lot
>>>>>>     less than 500k and still at a very usable level.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
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