[OSM-talk] Steve's better map

Jukka Rahkonen jukka.rahkonen at latuviitta.fi
Wed Oct 29 13:24:22 UTC 2014


Hi,

Steve Coast promised to make the best address map of the world by 
himself if he will not be elected into the board of the OSM Foundation:
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2014-October/002713.html
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2014-October/002761.html

"If I don't get elected then I'll continue focusing on address data 
outside of OSM. It's frankly the easier route but it would be a real 
shame if OSM isn't the venue to make it happen."

I have been thinking that perhaps that would be the best route anyway 
even if Mr. Coast gets elected to the board. By my own experience about 
the addresses in OSM they feel fuzzy and somewhat difficult to utilize 
outside OSM. Addresses given to building polygons are quite simple to 
move to centroids of the polygons for making a point layer of all the 
addresses but for example finding the municipality or city for the 
address points is tedious because administrative units are defined as 
relations which are also somewhat fuzzy and all too often broken.

With a dedicated database and tools for addresses the route could really 
be easier and faster and I would not feel ashamed at all while importing 
addresses from this master address database into OSM later.

-Jukka Rahkonen-





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