[Talk-us] what do we mean by geocoding?

[Bryce Nesbitt]

On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> The data that Bryce is talking to us about is post office locations.
> And even this, as we've begun to dig into it, is of limited value to
> the project, since we have to do the geocoding for this data.
>
> It's still worth discussing with USPS, both for political and
> technical reasons, but this is a very limited subset of our data and
> not the same as the USPS "crown jewel" of all US addresses.


At SOTM-US (State of the Map US) I spoke to Steven Johnson of the Census
Bureau on the issue of what data USPS actually has internally (as the
Census Bureau has some special licensed access to this data).

Apparently, the USPS does not even know the geocoordinates of most of their
assets (e.g. post boxes, post offices, delivery addresses).  They do have a
near perfect database of *what* these assets are, just not the coordinates.
 And that itself is useful.  Knowing a postbox exists is a huge clue to
geocoding it.  Knowing a postbox has been removed from service is a huge
clue.

All this opens up an opportunity.  If OSM is given a database
of approximate postbox locations, hand mappers can find the dang things,
and add value even for the USPS itself.  Until USPS is willing or able to
send their own carriers out to survey their own assets,
OSM can do something USPS can't do itself.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20130623/39f98735/attachment-0001.html>