[OSM-talk] Nominatim & US places

[Richard Welty]

On 1/1/11 11:34 PM, Anthony wrote:
>>>> what i still don't get is how it figures out the correct zip code of
>>>> 12018
>>>> for the displayed result string, i guess there's some research to be
>>>> done yet.
>>> I've back ported some code from the new version a couple of weeks back
>>> which tries to improve postcode handling for addresses but this is
>>> just the first stage.  Really I think the zip code stuff is pretty
>>> much a solved problem (or will be shortly)  the post town issues are
>>> probably more significant.
>> from a postal code ->  post office mapping issue, in general a postal
>> code only maps to one post office, so a table showing 12204, 12205,
>> 12206, 12207 and so forth mapping to Albany, NY is an entirely reasonable
>> thing to do.
> http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zips.txt
>
> This only gives one of the possibly many acceptable city names for a
> zip code (e.g. for 12205 it gives ROESSLEVILLE).  A zip can have more
> than one acceptable city name.  See
> http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/citytown_zip.jsp
>
> For geocoding, you probably want to accept any of the alternative names.
>
the post office has an actual name and 0 or more acceptable names
for each zip code. for 12205, the actual name is Albany NY and the
acceptable names are Colonie (which is the name of both a town and
an incorporated village within the town), and Rosselville (an
unincorporated hamlet).

for round tripping (where you would prefer that the output from one
lookup is acceptable input for the reverse lookup), only the actual
name is relevant.

for one way lookups where round tripping isn't a requirement, i agree
that the acceptable names should also resolve.

richard