[OSM-talk] Post code areas

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Anthony wrote:
> What are the sources for the post code areas?  How often are they 
> updated?  How are they defined (by reference to houses, by reference to 
> geographical features, by lat/lon, something else)?  Will this data be 
> integrated into other OSM data, or is it basically just a separate layer?

We do have post code boundaries running together with administrative 
boundaries sometimes, or running along a road. In these cases I'd expect 
the post code area multipolygon to use these existing OSM features 
(provided they exist).

It is unclear to me how the areas have been defined; my guess is that in 
innner-city areas, mostly roads have been used, and in the countryside 
they probably said something like "village A has this post code, village 
B has that, so let's draw a line in between". My guess is that someone, 
at some time, literally drew a line and lat/lon coordinates have been 
derived from that later.

There is a post code database that is officially maintained but it is 
not free. The data we have is a few years old. Post codes in Germany 
don't change that often, however.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"