Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 2:40 AM, Val Kartchner val...@gmail.com wrote: I think that someone has brought this up before, but I forget what happened. Can we get the United States Postal Service (USPS) address database? It's expensive and it has an incompatible license. The former might be workable, the later isn't. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
On 03/02/2011 01:40 AM, Val Kartchner wrote: Can we get the United States Postal Service (USPS) address database? It would still take some adjustments, but this would be a lot easier than driving every street and finding the numbers. A lot of house numbers are hard to find. The cops may be called if we go around casing houses. Dress the part: Wear your surveyor's jacket (http://shop.opencyclemap.org/products/openstreetmap-surveryors-jacket) and be ready to explain the project. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
On 3/2/2011 9:23 AM, Paul Johnson wrote: Dress the part: Wear your surveyor's jacket (http://shop.opencyclemap.org/products/openstreetmap-surveryors-jacket) and be ready to explain the project. Business cards are a succinct and quick way to answer questions: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Business_card ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
...and USPS database is probably 5-10 years out of date. You'd be better off trying to get tax assessor data on a county by county basis and then create centroids from the parcels. Tax assessors are pretty good at keeping their records up to date because they have to have accurate data to tax us. Licenses are still an issue, it has to be handled county by county. I am just working on my own county at the moment. I have data for the entire state of Oregon but don't have clearance to use it outside of my day job. I find this frustrating. Brian Wilson Corvallis Oregon ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Brian Wilson br...@wildsong.biz wrote: ...and USPS database is probably 5-10 years out of date. What USPS database are you talking about? My understanding is that the USPS maintains an extraordinarily up-to-date list of unique valid addresses. A copy of it would be extremely useful. The problem is it costs something like $10,000/year, and supposedly is not public domain. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Brian Wilson br...@wildsong.biz wrote: You'd be better off trying to get tax assessor data on a county by county basis and then create centroids from the parcels. I've tried that, and it works great for individual residences. But it's useless for apartments and businesses, because there's only one address per parcel. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Brian Wilson br...@wildsong.biz wrote: You'd be better off trying to get tax assessor data on a county by county basis and then create centroids from the parcels. I've tried that, and it works great for individual residences. But it's useless for apartments and businesses, because there's only one address per parcel. On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: My understanding is that the USPS maintains an extraordinarily up-to-date list of unique valid addresses. A copy of it would be extremely useful. Point being, with the USPS valid address database, when one parcel has an address of 740 Evergreen Terrace, and the parcel next to it has an address of 746 Evergreen Terrace, you'd know whether that means that one of the parcels has multiple addresses, or just that for some reason the USPS skipped a few numbers. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] all our addresses are belong to you
MapQuest is providing several address files that contain user-provided latitude and longitude locations across the world. Our users provided these exact locations to us so that they could be mapped correctly on our MapQuest maps. There are currently three (3) main files - one for the United States, one for Canada and one for Europe. More information can be found on our wiki page: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MapQuest/Critical_Addresses We didn't want to just import these addresses directly into OSM, but wanted them to be available to anyone that wanted to have them. To be clear: 1. these addresses are user provided 2. there is a high degree of ground-truth from these users 3. they WANTED to be in the data and be correctly mapped 4. we've checked with our lawyers, and yes, you can have them - UNENCUMBERED! Cheers! Deb Tankersley MapQuest Open Initiative OSM User: hey ok ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] all our addresses are belong to you
Hi All, I'm planning on converting these to OSM format in the coming hours and dividing them up into chunks of some size that can be relatively easily checked by humans. I'll post to the list and to that page with the chunks later. -Ian On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 2:55 PM, flambe...@gmail.com flambe...@gmail.comwrote: MapQuest is providing several address files that contain user-provided latitude and longitude locations across the world. Our users provided these exact locations to us so that they could be mapped correctly on our MapQuest maps. There are currently three (3) main files - one for the United States, one for Canada and one for Europe. More information can be found on our wiki page: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MapQuest/Critical_Addresses We didn't want to just import these addresses directly into OSM, but wanted them to be available to anyone that wanted to have them. To be clear: 1. these addresses are user provided 2. there is a high degree of ground-truth from these users 3. they WANTED to be in the data and be correctly mapped 4. we've checked with our lawyers, and yes, you can have them - UNENCUMBERED! Cheers! Deb Tankersley MapQuest Open Initiative OSM User: hey ok ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
In the US, addresses are typically assigned by local (sometimes state) governments and NOT by the USPS. The USPS is agnostic with respect to the actual house number, as long as it is correctly encoded in their Delivery Sequence Files (the DSF, which tells the postal worker where the delivery point is). To my knowledge the DSF is not available as a public domain data set; back in the '90's, the US Census Bureau had to get Congressional permission to use it for creating the Master Address File (MAF). Also, in most municipal street numbering and addressing schemes it is quite common to assign addresses that increment by 4 (200, 204, 208, and so on). In some areas,-particularly rural/exurban areas, addresses are assigned based on the distance between the previous address so that you could conceivably have house numbers 200, and 998 on the same 'block' (between road intersections). Hope this helps, --SEJ [t: @geomantic s: sejohnson8] A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. -Ludwig Wittgenstein On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 15:53, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Brian Wilson br...@wildsong.biz wrote: You'd be better off trying to get tax assessor data on a county by county basis and then create centroids from the parcels. I've tried that, and it works great for individual residences. But it's useless for apartments and businesses, because there's only one address per parcel. On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 3:44 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: My understanding is that the USPS maintains an extraordinarily up-to-date list of unique valid addresses. A copy of it would be extremely useful. Point being, with the USPS valid address database, when one parcel has an address of 740 Evergreen Terrace, and the parcel next to it has an address of 746 Evergreen Terrace, you'd know whether that means that one of the parcels has multiple addresses, or just that for some reason the USPS skipped a few numbers. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 4:11 PM, Steven Johnson sejohns...@gmail.com wrote: To my knowledge the DSF is not available as a public domain data set; back in the '90's, the US Census Bureau had to get Congressional permission to use it for creating the Master Address File (MAF). The USPS claims copyright on pretty much all of its databases. Whether or not that copyright is valid is another story, and also not all that relevant unless someone wants to spend thousands of dollars buying a copy of the database, giving it away for free, and waiting to see if the USPS sues them. (*) An alternative might be to try making a FOIA request to the US Census Bureau for its list of all valid addresses (not geolocated). They have so far successfully claimed that the *geocoded* list of addresses is exempt for privacy reasons, but I don't think anyone has made a request for the *non-geocoded* list. (*) Incidentally, if you'd like to buy a copy of the database and give it to me, I'd be willing to be the guinea pig who redistributes it, or at least those portions of it which I don't think are copyrightable. I'm confident enough to stick my neck out that any claimed copyright on a trivially ordered list of all addresses in the United States is not valid. But please don't break any contracts in doing so. Here's the list of vendors: http://www.usps.com/ncsc/ziplookup/vendorslicensees.htm ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
What we really need is a way to tag a grid (in those places that use one). That way we can give an approximate location (and hopefully the correct side of the street) if we lack an exact location. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
Anthony wrote: (*) Incidentally, if you'd like to buy a copy of the database and give it to me, I'd be willing to be the guinea pig who redistributes it, or Buying the database and giving it to you is probably against the terms of the license, possibly leaving that person open to being a guinea pig also. Andy -- Andy PGP Key ID: 0xDC1B5864 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 5:06 PM, Andrew Ayre a...@britishideas.com wrote: Anthony wrote: (*) Incidentally, if you'd like to buy a copy of the database and give it to me, I'd be willing to be the guinea pig who redistributes it, or Buying the database and giving it to you is probably against the terms of the license, possibly leaving that person open to being a guinea pig also. Andy, if you don't know Anthony's already been banned from OSM for his misappropriation of proprietary datasets. Fortunately in this case I don't think he has the resources to make good on using the USPS. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 5:06 PM, Andrew Ayre a...@britishideas.com wrote: Anthony wrote: (*) Incidentally, if you'd like to buy a copy of the database and give it to me, I'd be willing to be the guinea pig who redistributes it, or Buying the database and giving it to you is probably against the terms of the license, possibly leaving that person open to being a guinea pig also. Quite true. Which is one reason among several that I don't expect anyone to take me up on the offer. :( ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USPS Address Database
At 2011-03-02 11:23, Brian Wilson wrote: You'd be better off trying to get tax assessor data on a county by county basis and then create centroids from the parcels. Tax assessors are pretty good at keeping their records up to date because they have to have accurate data to tax us. Almost. Unfortunately, the actual mail-delivery addresses, usually assigned by cities, are not particularly important to the county assessors. As I started to analyze San Bernardino County, CA (the largest county in the US), finding many parcel address problems, I queried the assessor about it, and received this response: ...As you have noted, there are considerable errors in the parcel situs address information. This is largely due to this data being of secondary importance to the Assessor's Office. The address of primary importance is the owner address which is critical for mailing purposes. Historically, the situs address info. is collected when a parcel becomes occupied and would only be updated if the property owner submits an address change request. Over the years as zip code and city limit boundary changes occur, they may not be reflected in the situs address. With the advent of GIS, the situs address has gained greater visibility, usability and importance. Because of this, the Assessor's Office is beginning to make corrections to the situs address data as they are made aware of problem areas. Overtime, we hope to see significant improvements in this information. So, there is hope. I haven't audited any other county's parcel addresses. -- Alan Mintz alan_mintz+...@earthlink.net ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USGS National Hydrography Dataset
At 2011-02-17 22:21, Toby Murray wrote: On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 12:09 AM, Val Kartchner val...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, 2011-02-17 at 08:57 -0500, Phil! Gold wrote: (TopOSM also shows a lot of intermittent streams from the USGS National Hydrography Dataset.) Can we get this USGS dataset loaded? It would be more accurate than tracing from satellite images, and much quicker too. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NHD It has already been imported in some areas. Check the Basins and per-basin sign-ups section on the above page for details. There has not been an effort to do a nation-wide import though. As I understand it, the tools have been provided for local people to do it on their own. I have been meaning to look at this for Kansas... Do look carefully at the results. In some places in the central/high deserts of CA, the NHD contained many thousands of poorly-connected streams that rarely seemed to correlate with actual features in surveys or satellite imagery. A lot of this is the nature of water in the desert - it tends to be very thin and to move around over time. The result was trouble with object density and download sizes, server throttling violations, all with no real benefit. -- Alan Mintz alan_mintz+...@earthlink.net ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TriMet will begin OSM improvements in the Portland area
At 2011-02-10 18:28, PJ Houser wrote: 6 inch aerial imagery flown Fall 2010 Wow - that's among the highest-quality and most recent imagery available anywhere. It should result in very accurate alignment, as long as it's been well referenced/ortho'd. Would it be possible to make it available for use by other OSM users? Have you looked at any image-analyzers that can produce road centerlines from imagery, like http://3667a17de9b94ccf8fd278f9de62dae4.cloudapp.net/ ? -- Alan Mintz alan_mintz+...@earthlink.net ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] all our addresses are belong to you
On 3/2/2011 3:55 PM, flambe...@gmail.com wrote: MapQuest is providing several address files that contain user-provided latitude and longitude locations across the world. Our users provided these exact locations to us so that they could be mapped correctly on our MapQuest maps. A quick look at several in my area: 1 - Road layout needed updating for intersection improvement 2 - Road name changed or was wrong in TIGER - surveys needed. 2- Probably correct 1- Nearby, but was dead center of the street I consider this a valuable resource, but definitely don't want a mass import. I can use them as good Mapdust reports - the ones which indicate errors are more useful than most Mapdust errors. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Systematic problem with GNIS import and elevation tags
At 2011-01-30 18:44, Paul Johnson wrote: I just noticed while researching node 357412228 that it has the following properties (mostly) imported from GNIS: Node id=357412228 lat=36.0747997 lon=-95.9005176 (projected: x=-95.9005176, y=36.0747997); Data set: 4B68BE0E; User: [id:92286 name:Paul Johnson]; ChangeSet id: 6CCAA4; Timestamp: 2011-01-30T02:34:15Z, Version: 4 tags: gnis:created=08/01/1994 gnis:county_id=143 name=KCMA-FM (Broken Arrow) FIXME=This tower exists, but it's not KCMA. gnis:feature_id=1102236 gnis:state_id=40 man_made=tower ele=261 I added the FIXME, but otherwise it is as it was imported from GNIS. Of concern: The ele= tag is described in http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:ele as being metric value, however, this was obviously imported as Imperial, and incorrectly at that (FCC has elevation of 264.3 feet). Clearly 261m isn't the correct elevation, but it is numerically closer to it's foot value. I'm wondering if the person who imported GNIS originally has plans to change ele values that match their GNIS values by (current ele) * 0.3048 = (corrected ele), and if not, how we should handle this as a community. There are a couple of things going on here. 1. The actual ground elevation near the base of the antenna appears to be about 870' (265m), so the ele tag is correct (no units implies meters). 2. Moving slightly to where I perceive the base of the tower to be, and converting to NAD27 datum (as used in the FCC searches), I get no AM or FM broadcast records anywhere nearby: *** 0 FM Records within 1.00 km distance of 36° 4' 29.20 N, 95° 54' 0.80 W *** *** 0 AM Records within 1.00 km distance of 36° 4' 29.20 N, 95° 54' 0.80 W *** Taking a peek at the tower in G, it can't be an AM broadcast antenna because there are many antennas mounted to it (for AM broadcast, the tower itself is the antenna). I also don't see an FM broadcast antenna on it (though it could be a single dipole and it's too fuzzy too see). 3. I do get an ASRN 1047282 that is off a couple hundred feet, but appears to be the right record. It claims ground elevation of 264.3m, which is consistent with the other sources. BTW, since not all towers require an ASRN, the next thing I would have tried is to search the ULS database for 1000-2 MHz and then 30-1000 MHz. Once you learn which services to ignore, you get decent site info. -- Alan Mintz alan_mintz+...@earthlink.net ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
