[OSM-talk] Suggestion more complete mapping verifactiion

[John Baker]

I have an idea of how to improve things.

Maybe you do this already I have no idea. As it is not stated anywhere in
the wiki from what I can tell about how you verify the maps.
I posted on your forums but it was suggested that I ask here instead.
When looking at a street map of central London that I thought it was
complete from the wiki but I found a few streets missing.

Now I can change the few I found but there will be more and I thought there
must be a better way to establish if the Open Street Map maps were complete
or not. Obviously "complete" is subjective I mean for all the street names
mapped and labeled.

Could we get a list of the streets and postcodes for all the streets from an
official source like the Royal Mail in the UK that we think we have mapped.
It shouldn't be hard to compare this will the street in the open mapping
database thus getting a list of all the outstanding streets.

For example we could get a database from say the Royal Mail of the streets
and postcodes in the UK we could then take a certain area of postcode and
cross reference this with the OSM data for a area of at least that region.


For example according to
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/UKCambridge is all complete.

Now we could get a list of all the roads begin with postcodes CB1 xxx, CB2
xxx, CB3 xxx, CB4 xxx, CB5 xxx and cross refenerce this street data with the
area of Cambridge with have mapped.


Now if there are streets in the Royal Mail/Official source that are not in
the OSM one then it is possible that we have missed some streets. And
someone can check these out by hand and update the map accordingly you wil
have the postcode and the street look them up on multimap or streetmap so
you know the location and more completely map the city.


Now I am happy to do the database work/coding etc for this all I will need
is an official source for the street info/index by postcode.


Now you can buy these but I would have thought someone in this project would
have this information already and could be used.


The benefits of this would be that we would know when we have completely
mapped a city (within reason – this system might not be 100% accurate but a
pretty good representation) and we can have accurate stats on this. Picking
up streets that you may have missed.

Also any new roads are completed in a certain area we can be notified
quickly and have someone map them.

When you do a mapping party you can more accurately say before say 30% was
mapped now 98% is mapped.

It would give more confidence to the mapping project. People can use the
maps if they fell that all the street is the area are accounted for. At the
moment I do not know even for one that look detailed like central London.

So if anyone could assist me with the "official" sources of data for streets
please let me know and I will see what I can work out.


B) Mailing lists? It is 2007 not 1997 people.
Where is the other one I thought they came in pairs. I thought everything on
the ark came in pairs……..

Let me know your thought people.

Cheers,

John
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20070915/a9ceeb0e/attachment.html>