[OSM-Talk-ZA] [CLUG-tech] South Africa location database.

[Luke Collins]

Hi Marcel

As discussed on the phone, for a specific exercise(Load shedding Web Site
www./loadshedding.eskom.co.za) we also needed to be able to navigate from a
province down to sub place. We made the mistake and started off with the
statistics base and found it not only inadequate but also that the
enumerated areas may have same names as some suburbs but spatially they were
way off.

We are still in the process of building up a complete NAD.  But would gladly
share what we have or get comments at this time.

Regards
Luke

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 10:11 AM, Marcel Berteler <
marcel.berteler at bdsolutions.co.za> wrote:

>  I would be interested in adding my 5 cents as we have a project that
> could directly benefit from this.
>
> One good place to get some other interested people would be
> talk-za at openstreetmap.org, the ZA mailing list of Openstreetmap. These
> people are quite far in mapping the whole of SA.
>
> In our own project (www.umsebenzi.gov.za) we needed to locate all the
> registered people as accurate as possible. We therefore choose to use the
> database of the Post Office
>  as that seems to be the most up to date and inclusive database that is
> freely available.
> We looked at other databases but when comparing them, we found the SAPO DB
> to be the most inclusive and possibly most recognizable to people on the
> ground.
>
> The database of Stats SA is outdated and not maintained. It basically was
> accurate when the last census was done in 2001.
> i quote Stats SA from an email I received from them:
>
> *"Basically, suburbs and villages on our database (referred to as
> sub-places) were demarcated for Census 2001. There are about 21 000 listed.
> Sub-places are further grouped into what we call main-places (which roughly
> correspond to tribal areas and towns). There are 3 109 main-places on our
> Census 2001 database."*
>
> The database of the Municipal Demarcation Board was the other database we
> looked at, but they seem to get it from a commercial vendor. I quote:
>
> *"We source our suburbs from SVP (GISCOE) I would advise you to contact
> them to get the correct capturing methods and validation."*
>
> We therefore choose to go with the SAPO database.
>
> Than, you refer to going the Province -> District Municipality -> Regional
> Municipality -> sub-urb route.
>
> This is how we would like to use it as well, but it does involve a lot of
> work as the SAPO DB is not linking their main parents to a municipality and
> this has to be done manually.
>
> An other interesting initiative is the location finder that can be found
> on: http://www.karabo.org.za
>
> As you can see, they use the SAPO DB as well, but leave the municipality
> layer out. Probably because they also did not feel like doing this manually.
>
> well, that it from my side ito where to get data from.
>
> How to store and manage the data? Not sure at this moment but I agree that
> it has to be managed and controlled and when used for 'real' projects
> backwards compatibility as well as language independence needs to be
> ensured.  ie: name changes and double names like 'Kaapstad' en 'Cape Town'
> which both appear in the SAPO DB.
>
> Once we have agreed on how to store and manage the data I am happy to
> 'donate' the db that we currently have that has all the child-parent
> relationships in place.
>
> Marcel
>
> Deon Bredenhann wrote the following on 2008/09/25 08:12:
>
> Hi all
>
> I have been toying with the idea of creating a database of locations in
> South-Africa. The trick is that it should be hierarchical and the data
> must be open for anyone to use. It would be nice if and town_id 457 in
> my database and town_id 457 in your database both point to the same
> town.
> Now from info I found on Wikipedia, it seems that every municipality has
> a code. Towns cannot have postal codes as the key, as some towns have
> more than one postal code. Now my suggestion so far for the hierarchy is
> as follows.
> Province -> District -> Municypality -> Town
> Western Cape -> Cape Winelands District -> Stellenbosh Municypality ->
> Franschhoek
> Now we have a distinct hierarchy of locations and for each location we
> can add additional info. (GPS co-ords, names in different languages,
> postal codes)
>
> Now to come to the tech part for Clug-tech
> I started playing with Google Appengine yesterday and it seems pretty
> straight forward. The code for the app should be open and the data
> should be available under the Creative Commons. What format should the
> data be available in. XML seems like such a bloat, but on the other
> hand, anyone can write an exporter for the format they would like and
> include it in the current app.
>
> Now, I'm thinking that users should not be able to edit the data
> directly, but submit patches for the data to be included. This can go
> through review and get included in the database. We've all seen how
> malicious people can get with Wikipedia. So how would this be done?
>
> So? Is there anyone interested in a project like this? Is there any
> people who want to call me an idiot and point me to a place where this
> is already available? Would it be useful to any of you?
>
> All input will be appreciated. Please let me know what you think.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Marcel Berteler
>
> *Chief Information Officer
>
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