[Talk-GB] UK address project (Was: UPRN to postcode lookup)

[Rob Nickerson]

Andrew wrote:
>Does this deserve a lightning talk or breakout session next weekend?

Go for it! As alluded to by CJ when he wrote "tying in with your address
project", I should flag that we do indeed have a project that is 75% funded
to help with UK addresses. I've held off saying much about this as I didn't
wait to raise any false hope given that most of the ideas we work on are
just that (i.e ideas). But this one seems almost certain to go ahead so
here are some more details.

The project builds upon what we spoke about at the breakout session during
the last SotM [1]. The idea is to use the land registry INSPIRE polygons
and the generalised buildings from OS Open Data to estimate where an
addressable location exists. This will then be presented to the community
via a dedicated single purpose editor (MapComplete). With promotional
effort we then hope to attract a wide range of people who can help
contribute the address details. With a simple editor and good in built
checks, we hope to be able to do this with significantly lower error rates
than many new contributors make when they are getting to grips with the
multi-purpose editors.

I presented about this recently at Geomob (see the recording [2]) and there
is also the scoping document to view [3]. There and at other places, people
have asked if we can do anything with the UPRNs. I certainly think this is
worth exploring and we plan to look at it in detail. As to Jerry's point
about speaking to the likes of the ODI, Peter Wells or Owen -> I'm on it.
In fact I'd spoken to the ODI earlier the same day. Personally I think
there are pros and cons of using the UPRNs in this project. There is a
beauty in retaining the simplicity in which it is currently scoped. This
does not of course prevent UPRNs being added afterwards. As that could be
done via a semi-automated approach.

As for the next steps with this particular project, I have a few more calls
to make to tie up funding, and after that we will kick off with a session
to gather more ideas and refine the details before we move to developing
it. Look out for an invite about that soon, but in the meantime please feel
free to reply here or contact me on rob AT osmuk.org.

I should conclude by noting that the project is not just technical. Having
now spoken to a lot of organisations about it, we have a lot of good will
with people willing to help us with promotion to large audiences, their
experiences from the many years of pushing for open UK addresses and more.

[1] https://osmuk.org/minutes/sotm-meeting-2020-07-04/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5k12cUyeP4
[3] https://osmuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Opening-UK-addreses.pdf

Thank you,
*Rob*
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