[OSM-talk] Adding Addresses to OSM

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy,

On Tuesday 12 September 2006 18:36, Andy Robinson wrote:
> On Tuesday 12 September 2006 17:46, Michael Robinson wrote:
> >Is there a standardized way to add street addresses to OSM?  It would seem
> >that the easiest way would be to add a node to the way that the address is
> >on.  Then add an "address" key for the address number and some sort of key
> >to say which side of the road the address is on.  Or if there were a
> >database of addresses and their lat/lon that could be important instead.
>
> This is one of these fundamental aspects of a fully fledges street index
> for a fully fledged street map, ie being able to turn a full address into a
> location.
>
> Personally I would prefer not to see the map data delivered to editors
> cluttered with extraneous nodes for every address. Clearly the db needs to
> hold nodes with address data though.

What about having each node in a way, where appropriate, holding address data?


We are close to this since you can add "place_numbers" and "postal_code" to 
any node. Thus you could go down a residential road and note down, for each 
existing node, the house number. Then searches would at least be reasonably 
accurate... in my experience multimap and streetmap are always fairly 
inaccurate at the street level anyway :)

Of course that only deals with numbers on one side of the road, and roads 
don't follow any sane pattern for numbering. Usually they go one way up a 
road, alternating from side to side. Sometimes they go up one side and down 
the other. Sometimes they just go nuts when roads have sections with no 
houses on one side. And so on. Sigh. Maybe just leave a note on the way: "If 
you live here, sorry, but your road is nuts."

Regards,
Tom

-- 
The task of critique is not to denounce the ideals, but to show their 
transformation into ideologies, and to challenge the ideology in the 
name of the betrayed ideal (Fromm – Beyond The Chains Of Illusion)