[Talk-GB] OSM UK address project: tags

[Rob Nickerson]

Thanks for all the comments so far. Please keep them coming.

Just to be clear, we are not trying to replicate the way Royal Mail or PAF
do it. Instead what we want is to define a way in which someone can take
the addr tags and write out an address on an envelope. Currently this
doesn't seem possible in a consistent way.

Personally I was hoping to do this using existing tags rather than creating
new ones. I know this will result in some work changing a few things to
conform to the new standard but introducing new tags would also create work
for existing OSM features.

For context, 17 years of OSM has led us to mapping (inconsistently) just
around 2.5million addresses. In total UK has 27 million residential
addresses plus unknown millions of non-residential addressees.

Hopefully we can find a solution that breaks as little as possible and
results in as little re-work as possible but we need to be realistic that
there is no silver bullet that solves everything without breaking anything.

Let's get this right now so that we can confidently map the other 25+
million addressees knowing we're using a system where is possible to use
OSM to write an envelope.

I'll end by saying that, despite not aiming to replicate RM/PAF, it does
seem that we will need a way of recording the parent+child type
arrangement. Because this hasn't been agreed across the UK community to
date, we now have more and more tags being created (e.g. addr:terrace,
addr:site, addr:parentstreet, addr:locality). I suspect some have been
created because the child element is not a street and hence people don't
want to use the addr:street+addr:parentstreet combination. Do we need to
clarify that addr:street can be used for non-street child elements or is
that a no-go as well?

P.s. I'll respond to the ideas received in another email.

Best regards
Rob

On Tue, 21 Dec 2021, 17:03 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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