[Talk-GB] OSM UK address project: tags

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

I hope many of you are now managing to relax and enjoy the Christmas break.
For those still working, I hope it drops away soon and you are able to
enjoy a break soon.

As previously discussed, OSM UK is running a project to make it easier to
collect address data in the UK. As a quick recap, the aim is to create a
simple user interface where anyone (existing and new mappers) can add
address data. The interface will be populated with a series of points where
we believe there to be an address (filtered to avoid duplication with any
existing OSM data) and the user will be asked to input the top part of the
address.

One of the challenges we have is making sure that the right part of the
address is assigned to the right addr:* tag in OpenStreetMap. We have
therefore been studying the address tags and how they are used in the UK.
Suffice to say it is not straightforward and without its inconsistencies. I
have therefore produced the following wiki page to help other mappers
understand the soup of available tags and which are better / worse to use.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Addresses_in_the_United_Kingdom

You will see on the page that one of the concepts we struggle with is when
you need both a parent and child part of the local area to describe a
complete address. In Royal Mail's language they use a "thoroughfare" and
"dependent thoroughfare" whilst in OpenStreetMap we seem to have multiple
tag options. For the OSM UK project we want to keep it simple and not
bombard new mappers with the details of conflicting / inconsistent OSM
tags. As such we plan to use addr:place (child) and addr:street (parent)
for these parent and child relationships.

Please let me know if you have any feedback. I will try my utmost to take
this on board but a word of warning: I have found OSM tags to be
inconsistent and not straightforward. I will try my best but cannot work
miracles even at this time of the year!

P.S. The wiki page is very much focussed on the top part of an address.
This is intentional as it is what we will focus on in the OSM UK project.
These address parts require ground survey (or local knowledge) whereas some
of the lower elements of an address can be determined by admin boundaries /
nearness to existing OSM data.

Thank you
*Rob*
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