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If you're interested in making both forward and reverse geocoding better, please consider paying attention to a project I started and help maintain called OpenA

If you're interested in making both forward and reverse geocoding better, please consider paying attention to a project I started and help maintain called OpenAddresses: http://openaddresses.io http://openaddresses.io The goal is to collect address datasets so that forward and reverse geocoding is an easier problem to solve. A contributor wrote an excellent overview of the project the other day: https://medium.com/colemanm/creating-an-open-database-of-addresses-73a7d0dc24c5 https://medium.com/colemanm/creating-an-open-database-of-add...

thampiman 12y ago
Very cool project. Out of curiosity, how do you test the validity of the addresses?
- yellowbkpk 12y ago
  All of the addresses come from "authoritative" datasets (i.e. from local or state governments) so we're assuming them to be correct.
  - Stratoscope 12y ago
    Interesting project! I assume you don't have a manual procedure to report and correct individual addresses that are in error, and the trick would be to contact the agency that provided the erroneous dataset, is that right? It would be useful to have a way to find out "where did the data for this location come from, and who do I contact to correct it?" For example, our house doesn't have an outline on your sample map, although there is a red dot there. Our street address shows up on the house next door, and the neighboring houses in that direction are shifted similarly. Most other online maps for our location have the same error or similar. I think the confusion happened because we are on a corner and some years ago a previous owner changed our street address from one street to the other. So whatever agency maintains this data goofed something up in the process. If there were an easy way to find out who this mystery agency is, then I could help them sort out this mixup. :-)
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      It isn't really user friendly, but I would say it is fairly easy to find what information they are using by looking at the source files: https://github.com/openaddresses/openaddresses/tree/master/sources https://github.com/openaddresses/openaddresses/tree/master/s... (In the US the data might come from someone who accepts updates from someone else, but it is usually the state, county or city
mvexel 12y ago
It's a nice overview but it glosses over the fact that while the OA database is governed by a CC0 license, the individual address collections in the database are still governed by their own licenses which can be (much) more restrictive. The fact that you can download the data doesn't mean you can use it the way you want. The OA web site hints at this but doesn't address (ah-hah) that underlying problem. That doesn't mean that OA is not valuable - quite the contrary - but I think the fact that it's presented as one big free and open dataset can be misleading.
- tomcam 12y ago
  Lists laid out in an obvious format are not subject to copyright.
- gabemart 12y ago
  As the (dead) sibling comment points out, my (non-lawyer) understanding of US copyright law is that simple collections of facts, when compiled in a way that requires no creativity, do not enjoy any copyright protection at all. I would be surprised if a simple list of addresses, even a very large one, is something that could be subject to copyright.

thampiman 12y ago

Very cool project. Out of curiosity, how do you test the validity of the addresses?

yellowbkpk 12y ago
All of the addresses come from "authoritative" datasets (i.e. from local or state governments) so we're assuming them to be correct.
- Stratoscope 12y ago
  Interesting project! I assume you don't have a manual procedure to report and correct individual addresses that are in error, and the trick would be to contact the agency that provided the erroneous dataset, is that right? It would be useful to have a way to find out "where did the data for this location come from, and who do I contact to correct it?" For example, our house doesn't have an outline on your sample map, although there is a red dot there. Our street address shows up on the house next door, and the neighboring houses in that direction are shifted similarly. Most other online maps for our location have the same error or similar. I think the confusion happened because we are on a corner and some years ago a previous owner changed our street address from one street to the other. So whatever agency maintains this data goofed something up in the process. If there were an easy way to find out who this mystery agency is, then I could help them sort out this mixup. :-)
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    It isn't really user friendly, but I would say it is fairly easy to find what information they are using by looking at the source files: https://github.com/openaddresses/openaddresses/tree/master/sources https://github.com/openaddresses/openaddresses/tree/master/s... (In the US the data might come from someone who accepts updates from someone else, but it is usually the state, county or city

mvexel 12y ago

It's a nice overview but it glosses over the fact that while the OA database is governed by a CC0 license, the individual address collections in the database are still governed by their own licenses which can be (much) more restrictive. The fact that you can download the data doesn't mean you can use it the way you want. The OA web site hints at this but doesn't address (ah-hah) that underlying problem. That doesn't mean that OA is not valuable - quite the contrary - but I think the fact that it's presented as one big free and open dataset can be misleading.

tomcam 12y ago
Lists laid out in an obvious format are not subject to copyright.
gabemart 12y ago
As the (dead) sibling comment points out, my (non-lawyer) understanding of US copyright law is that simple collections of facts, when compiled in a way that requires no creativity, do not enjoy any copyright protection at all. I would be surprised if a simple list of addresses, even a very large one, is something that could be subject to copyright.