[Talk-GB] OSM UK address project: tags

[SK53]

I wrote extensively
<http://sk53-osm.blogspot.com/2020/06/housing-terraces-in-wales-minor.html>
about this issue a little while ago, and suggested 4 viable approaches.
Subsequently, the suggestion of using addr:parentstreet was made which
seemed wholly sensible, so I have used it. This slightly inverts the Royal
Mail convention of making the "dependent" object the primary one we
reference in addr:street. In the majority of cases the parent street can
easily be inferred, but the dependent one cannot. Therefore it is the
latter we should focus on capturing, particularly if postcodes are
different.

I strongly oppose the use of addr:place, for similar reasons to those of
Sarah, but also because it goes against 10 years of in-depth mapping of
addresses. I think in Nottingham we have mainly used it for non-street
addresses, eg., units in a shopping centre (Victoria Centre) or addressable
locations on university (University Park) or hospital campuses.Will Philips
will know better because his OSM-Nottingham consumes OSM addresses. Other
consumers of UK addresses will also know how they process such tags, and I
think the project has been supported by at least one of these.

Additionally, I notice that addr:place is used where addr:city contains the
postal town, not the geographical town/village where the address is located
(this should work with Nominatim searches, from what Sarah says). Therefore
adding another discordant usage of this tag would be most unhelpful for any
other data consumer. On this latter point, I think Mark's suggestion of
potential uk specific address tags would make sense, and would advocate
postal town being one of them. If addr:* tags are to be devoted to
replicating PAF addresses then we'll probably need an additional set of
address tags anyway.

Several folk have mentioned the British Standard. I was told long ago that
it allows for all manner of addressing techniques (i.e., not just postal
ones), but my understanding this was via a "bill-of-materials" type
construction of addresses which may not fit well with tagging rather than a
relational data model.

tl;dr: dont use addr:place in this way; focus on collecting dependent
street; have a distinct, and separate tag for postal towns.

Jerry

On Tue, 21 Dec 2021 at 16:08, Rob Nickerson <rob.j.nickerson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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