[OSM-talk] Populated places: how to use is_in tag?

[Patrick Weber]

Niccolo

As you said it might be better to leave the administrative hierarchy out 
of the database, as these will be likely to differ significantly from 
country to country. As OSM matures, one could develop an external 
database that models administrative hierarchies for different countries 
(a big undertaking in itself, something like geonames.org have) and hook 
up to the OSM database through the placename (and/or ID's, as there will 
be duplicate place names). In fact, geonames.org already have a 
hierarchical database of place names OSM could hook into.

Just my two cents

Patrick

Niccolo Rigacci wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm about adding about 8000 points of Italian populated places.
>
> The main purpose is to render place names into the map, so a 
> minimal tag schema is:
>
>   <node id='-6' action='modify' visible='true' lat='45.438898' lon='12.330918'>
>     <tag k='name' v='Venezia' />
>     <tag k='place' v='city' />
>     <tag k='population' v='271073' />
>     <tag k='source' v='geodati.gfoss.it' />
>     <tag k='gfoss_id' v='3515' />
>   </node>
>
> this includes "population" and "place" to aid rendering at 
> different zoom levels, etc.
>
> The "gfoss_id" is the ID from the geodati.gfoss.it database, the 
> source of the data.
>
> On the Italian mailing list it was suggested to add more tags, to 
> accomodate the administrative hierarchy:
>
>  Regione -> Provincia -> Comune
>
> It seems that there is not common agreement on how to accomplish 
> this. The only pertinent tag seems to be "is_in", but it is so
> loosely defined in the wiki.
>
> I think that we must address rendering and searching, without 
> overloading the database with unnecessary information that need 
> maintenance (and that can be obtained from other sources).
>
> Any suggestion?
>
>   
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