[Talk-GB] Geospatial Commission to release UPRN/ UPSN identifiers under Open Government Licence

[Robert Whittaker (OSM lists)]

On Thu, 2 Apr 2020 at 22:19, RobJN <rob.j.nickerson at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's all a bit unclear but from what I've read it sounds like there will be
> a release of the UPRN / UPSN identifiers and their associated geometries
> ("coordinates" in some text). I see no reference to address data being part
> of the release.

There will presumably be a drive in government circles to store
addresses as UPRN's, and then fetch the associated location and
address data from AddressBase. Assuming Rob's interpretation is
correct (I think it probably is) then this could be bad new for
sources of addresses and postcodes for OSM. While we'll be more easily
able to geo-locate objects from their URPN's, the actual addresses in
any datasets will become more likely to be contaminated by OS's IP
rights in AddressBase.

So this news could be a bit of a double-edged sword I think. e.g. if
the FHRS data switched to using UPRNs and AddressBase-derived
addresses, we would lose the ability to make use of addresses and
postcodes from the FHRS data, but then we'd have accurate locations we
could rely on to directly add establishments to the map from their
FHRS entry.

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker