[Talk-GB] Import UK postcode data?

[Nick Allen]

Hi Russ,

Somewhere in tbe Osmand forum you should find a link for a postcode player
you can download & use. I think it was Harry, one of the main people
answering queries who produced it.

Regards

Nick
my phone is responsible for any spelling mistakes!

On Wed, 2 Oct 2019, 17:12 Russ Phillips via Talk-GB, <
talk-gb at openstreetmap.org> wrote:

> OsmAnd is what made me think of it. I'm using that for directions a lot
> now, and it's common these days to give a postcode to plug into a sat nav,
> but they frequently don't work in OsmAnd.
>
> I was somewhat surprised that it hadn't already been done, and I accept
> all the reasons for not doing it.
>
> I'll look into alternatives.
>
> Russ
>
>
> On 02/10/2019 15:52, SK53 wrote:
>
> I really see no point. The data are already present in Nominatim  (albeit
> perhaps not up-to-date) and search is the ONLY thing that so-called
> postcode centroids can help with. DE24 (Sinfin) was imported long ago, see
> this overpass query <http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/MNZ>.
>
> What can be done is attempt to assign postcodes to streets, and various
> incomplete efforts have been made over the years. Open Data provides full
> addresses for around 70% of UK postcodes (principally Companies House, Food
> Hygiene & National Register of Social Housing).
>
> What would be useful is a maintained set of postcode information based on
> codepoint open/ONS postcode data/OS Local. The sorts of things which it
> would be useful to know are:
>
>    - Is the postcode centroid co-located with others (e.g., delivery
>    offices, some businesses, blocks of flats)
>    - Can the postcode be unambiguously assigned to a street & post town?
>    - Is the post code in use or not (ONS is now obviously 8 years old,
>    but still potentially useful). Greg's FHRS tracker does appear to indicate
>    a degree of churn with inner-city postcodes (although some of this will be
>    inadvertent use of more general rather than specific postcodes by people
>    filling in the FHRS forms)
>    - Is a postcode the sole postcode for that street?
>
> Somewhere I have an old CPO table with some of this data populated. I
> think Geolytix had summary info associated with their post code sector
> shape files as well.
>
> Adding addr:postcode to streets which have a single postcode is in my book
> fine: numerous LAs put this on street signs (Rushcliffe & Gedling for
> sure); it's an intermediate step to adding the addresses to houses  Once
> the postcodes which obviously belong to a single street are eliminated it's
> often easier to work out where the others belong.
>
> Note that other than for FHRS we have no good source for Northern Ireland
> postcodes at all. Equally assignment of rural postcodes is quite a bit
> harder than urban ones. In re-reading bits of Chris's blog last night I
> came across a post of his
> <https://chris-osm.blogspot.com/2017/03/have-you-moved.html> showing that
> some postcodes move huge distances between releases.
>
> Jerry
>
> PS. The Sinfin postcodes possibly should be removed as they were added
> IIRC before Mike Collinson's discussions with OSGB about OS Open Data.
>
> On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 13:44, Russ Phillips via Talk-GB <
> talk-gb at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm wondering if it would be feasible and advisable to import the UK
>> postcode data from OS OpenData Codepoint
>> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey_OpenData#Code-Point_Open>
>> .
>>
>> The licence is OSM compatible. My thinking was that we could create a
>> node for each data point and set the addr:postcode tag. This would be
>> useful for routing software like OsmAnd, since it would allow a user to
>> enter a postcode as a destination.
>>
>> I'm happy to do the work, but the import guidelines
>> <https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines> say that imports
>> should be discussed on the imports@ list and the appropriate local
>> communities, hence this email.
>>
>> Russ Phillips
>>
>>
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