[Talk-us-massachusetts] A simple check for addresses before the import

[Yury Yatsynovich]

Greetings!

I've recently written a simple code (see lines 107-202 in
https://github.com/yyatsyn/MassGIS-address-import/blob/master/import_addresses_work_in_progress.py)
that looks for nearest 7 streets for each address point (or each building
with address information) and marks this point/building as problematic if
neither of names of the 7 streets match the addr:street tag value for the
point/building.
I've done this check for points/buildings that are already in OSM as well
as those that are in MassGIS database of addresses.

The resulting shape files are stored in
https://mega.nz/#F!75M1CAAJ!8r63YpTy3HIACDcAUO4c2g (make sure you download
all files with the same names to be able to open the corresponding
.shp-file):
-- problem_pnt_addr.shp and problem_bld_addr.shp -- have points/building
that are already in OSM
-- *COUNTY*_problem_mgis.shp -- have points from MassGIS (split by
counties).

Most of problems with MassGIS are from relatively small mismatches in
street names (e.g. MassGIS has addresses with "MEDOUIE CREEK ROAD", while
in OSM it is just "MEDOUIE CREEK" or "HELLER WAY" vs "HELLERS WAY" or
"TENNESSEE AVENUE" vs "TENNESSE AVENUE").

I guess, I may also add some fuzzy matching mechanism to the code (so that
"TENNESSEE AVENUE" and "TENNESSE AVENUE" would be considered the same) in
order to separate those MassGIS addresses that are definitely located in
the wrong places (those MassGIS points for which addr:street is not even
somewhat similar to the names of nearby OSM streets) from points that are
next to a street with a mis-spelled name.

If there are mismatches in names of streets in OSM and MassGIS, how do we
figure out which source is right?

As far as I know, some OSM apps (MAPS.ME, 7 ways) need addr:street and name
of the highway to match exactly in order to convert and properly search
over the address data. So, before we continue with importing, shall we
correct all mismatches in the existing points/buildings with addr:street
and misspelled streets?

Best,
-- 
Yury Yatsynovich
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us-massachusetts/attachments/20180806/a01a3326/attachment.html>