[Talk-us] suburban superblocks that nobody wants to survey

Nathan Mills nathan at nwacg.net
Fri Mar 16 00:58:03 GMT 2012


On 3/15/2012 6:10 PM, Nathan Edgars II wrote:
> How does this work? Do you stop at every house and write down the 
> address?

I mount a camera on the windshield and use JOSM's image plugin to place 
them on the track, then it's just a matter of looking at the images and 
identifying addresses, then estimating the position for the address 
point based on the picture and the GPS track.

I first tried to do this with my cell phone camera, but the aperture 
control and dynamic range were poor enough that I could only get about 
half the addresses.  It turns out even a cheap P&S works a lot better. 
Obviously the points aren't going to be perfectly placed on the entrance 
to the house, but it's as accurate as anything else those of us without 
pro equipment can really do.

My original tactic was to write down the addresses at the end of each 
block and use interpolation ways. In a lot of subdivisions around here 
that works really well because the city forces them to address (mostly) 
correctly. In other cities where the addressing is less regular it 
doesn't work so well, in that not all addresses in the range actually 
exist. The problem with this method becomes apparent when you find that 
the subdivision you've mapped is too new to have aerial coverage. Too 
much guessing for me.

The really sad thing is when you get to a new subdivision before there 
are any houses. No address points at all in that case. ;)

-Nathan



More information about the Talk-us mailing list