[Talk-GB] Quarterly Project: Addresses and Postcodes

Marc Gemis marc.gemis at gmail.com
Thu Oct 19 11:23:20 UTC 2017


Maybe it is interesting to repeat how Nominatim resolves addresses,
just in case someone wants to do a search after adding an address.

- Nominatim starts from an address point (or building way with
address). It takes the house number from it and the street name.
- It tries to match the street name with a nearby street.
- The rest of the info, suburb, city, country, etc are taken from the
way. i.e. it looks in which boundary the way lies and work its way up
the admin levels.
- In case there is no boundary, it can use a place node as well to
determine the name of a certain admin level, but that is less precise

- postal codes are taken from the address point, when specified. This
is needed in UK/USA but not in e.g. Belgium or Germany.


http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org is your friend to understand where
the data is coming from.

Of course, if you only work with a relational database (as Lester
pointed out), one prefers all data on the address node.
Relational DB with GIS extensions do not need this (e.g. Nominatim).

Nominatim's approach currently has problems with streets on the border
of e.g. 2 villages. Sara Hoffmann (Lonvia) told me that there are some
plans to fix this.

regards

m.

On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 10:35 AM, Adam Snape <adam.c.snape at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm convinced that many such addresses are unnecessarily long (are there
> really multiple Weldons in the Swanscome postal area?). Nevertheless we
> should have a way of mapping them if they are the official address. I agree
> that more general guidance would aid consistency. My address mapping
> practice is as follows. I would welcome correction if others feel I am doing
> something incorrectly::
>
> The post town
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_post_towns_in_the_United_Kingdom is
> tagged as addr:city (whether or not it is a city or indeed whether an
> otherwise more important place is nearer). Though this should all be in
> upper case when used I add the tag in lower case with an initial capital
> letter as it would normally be written in a sentence.
>
> For sub divisions of this area the wiki has documented tags addr:suburb and
> addr:hamlet. I tend to default to suburb everywhere except when dealing with
> an actual isolated hamlet. Where there are two subdivisions as in Steve's
> example, I'd use hamlet for the smaller one  and suburb for the larger one.
>
> The wiki suggests to avoid addr:street and addr:place together but I use
> them for things like named retail/business parks where there is also a
> street address eg. https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/527520264
>
> I do not tag the name of the property separately if it is the same as the
> main name=* tag
>
> Counties have not been formally part of postal addresses for many years.
> Royal Mail permits people to optionally add the name of the old Postal
> County, modern administrative or ceremonial county, or traditional county to
> their address according to their personal preference, but this plays no role
> in delivery. So I do not tag a county in the address.
>
>
> So I'd tag Steve's example: name=The Spring River, addr:street=Talbot Lane,
> addr:hamlet=Weldon, addr:suburb=Ebbsfleet Valley, addr:city=Swanscombe,
> addr:postcode=DA10 1AZ
>
> I hope that helps
>
> Adam
>
>
> On 18 Oct 2017 11:49 p.m., "Steve Doerr" <doerr.stephen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/10/2017 19:07, Robert Whittaker (OSM lists) wrote:
>>
>> It doesn't seem to have been mentioned here yet, but this quarter's UK
>> mapping project is to improve addresses and postcodes:
>> https://osmuk.org/uncategorized/jump-in-to-our-quarterly-mapping-project/
>>
>>
>
> It would be useful to have some guidance on tagging for UK addresses. For
> instance, how would you tag the different elements of the following address
> for a pub/carvery that opened recently near me:
>
> The Spring River
> Talbot Lane
> Weldon
> Ebbsfleet Valley
> SWANSCOMBE
> DA10 1AZ
>
> Regards,
> Steve
>
>
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