[OSM-talk] house numbers revisited

[Martijn van Exel]

Hi all,

I haven't seen any activity recently on the house numbers page[1].
The related page on Postal Addresses[2] was also not updated recently.
Is there still discussion ongoing on another page?
Is there a current proposal?

Just to get a feeling for how it should work, I address-tagged way  
7369384 as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<osm version="0.5" generator="OpenStreetMap server">
   <way id="7369384" visible="true"  
timestamp="2008-04-17T12:30:01+01:00" user="mvexel">
     <nd ref="46296689"/>
     <nd ref="46297663"/>
     <tag k="houseno:left-min" v="426"/>
     <tag k="houseno:right-max" v="381"/>
     <tag k="houseno:right-scheme" v="odd"/>
     <tag k="created_by" v="Potlatch 0.8a"/>
     <tag k="houseno:left-max" v="380"/>
     <tag k="name" v="Rustenburgerstraat"/>
     <tag k="AND_nosr_r" v="15218591"/>
     <tag k="highway" v="unclassified"/>
     <tag k="houseno:left-scheme" v="even"/>
     <tag k="houseno:right-min" v="425"/>
     <tag k="oneway" v="1"/>
   </way>
</osm>

See also http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit.html?lat=52.351279&lon=4.89035&zoom=18

As you can see, I employ four tags to indicate house number ranges:

* houseno:left-min
* houseno:left-max
* houseno:left-scheme
* houseno:right-min
* houseno:right-max
* houseno:right-scheme

Left and right are relative to the direction if the way.
Min is the first house number on either side, again looking in the  
direction of the way.
Max is the last house number on either side, looking in the direction  
of the way.
Scheme can be one of 'even', 'odd' or 'mixed'.

This works for almost all situations I know of in the Netherlands.
I you would want to interpolate individual address locations based on  
the ranges, you could run into problems like:
* All addresses are actually located in one building somewhere along  
the street
* In rural areas, buildings are often quite far apart so interpolation  
would give inaccurate results.
Still, I think this is a usable scheme.
I'd love your comments.

[1]http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/House_numbers
[2]http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Relations/Proposed/Postal_Addresses
-- 
martijn van exel -+- mvexel at gmail.com -+- http://www.schaaltreinen.nl/