[Talk-us] [Imports] Zipcode Import

Steven Johnson sejohnson8 at gmail.com
Mon Dec 21 01:45:55 GMT 2009


The USPS treats ZIP codes as an extension of address data and as such, they
should be treated as point data, since they are an attribute of the address
associated with a building or a property parcel. The problem with creating
polygons out of these points is that the ZIP codes don't cleave neatly along
natural geographic boundaries (e.g. roads, hydrographic features, etc.).
This doesn't prevent map publishers from aggregating them into polygons,
however published maps of ZIP polygons should be considered rough
approximations, rather than officially recognized ZIP code polygons.

I think it's best to keep the ZIP as part of the address tags rather than
try to shoehorn ZIPs into polygons which would be inaccurate and subject to
frequent change.

SEJ
----
"Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands from beans." -Empedocles



On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 16:00, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>wrote:
>
>> Still, the post codes are *commonly* used as a shortcut geo reference; it
>> is a very popular way of doing e.g. a store finder on a web site - enter
>> your post code and we'll show you the nearest store. Because of this, there
>> is high demand for post codes to be available in OSM and I am certain that
>> we will eventually either map or import them.
>
>
> I have responded to that, though.  A single point in the approximate center
> of the general area where a zip code is used is fine.  I don't think OSM is
> really the best place to store those (slightly less than) 99999 points,
> because it so easily stands alone and isn't something that lends itself to
> public editing (you just import a database every so often, it's not really
> something individual OSMers can survey).  But I'll get over that - if you
> really get a kick out of importing 99,999 or so zip code centroids, fine.
> In fact, I can probably find a CSV file where the centroids have already
> been calculated for this.  It's quite a common application.  (You'll
> basically be converting someone's table of zip codes to lat/lon pairs into
> OSM nodes, so geocoders can then take those OSM nodes and convert them back
> to a table of zip codes to lat/lon pairs.  But, whatever, have a ball.)
>
> If you want to do more than that, as Katie said, "It would be appropriate
> to attach zip code as attributes to addresses."
>
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