I am currently developing a master’s thesis focused on collaborative mapping through OpenStreetMap. The objective of my work is to build a detailed cartographic database of a municipality that, until now, has had no available geographic or cadastral information. This includes the complete absence of building numbering.
To tackle this challenge, I am vectorizing all the buildings and applying labels with temporary identifications. These visual identifications are essential to individualize each building and allow for the future insertion of new information. The goal is to print the resulting map to create a municipal register, which will serve as a reference for various municipal departments and disciplines, facilitating the management and insertion of relevant data, including the numbering of each house.
I plan that, in the near future, as the buildings receive their official numbering, the temporary labels will be replaced by the correct door numbers. However, I am facing difficulties with the approval of these changes on OpenStreetMap, as a moderator does not agree with the inclusion of these temporary labels on the map.
I would like to ask for the community’s opinion on this matter and, if possible, obtain guidance on how to proceed so that this project can advance in a way that meets OpenStreetMap’s guidelines while also fulfilling the objectives of my research.
Thank you all in advance for your attention and help.
OSM is a map of things that exist IRL (like buildings and addresses) or are directly related to them (like contact details of businesses). That means OSM is not a place for reference numbers that only exist inside your thesis project.
Two alternatives that come to mind are using the OSM way IDs of the buildings as your reference numbers or downloading the building data and then assigning your reference numbers on a local copy of the data. Would either of these solutions work for you?
If the numbers you are adding are visibly marked on the houses (maybe
even in a temporary fashion), you can add them in a “ref” tag or maybe
even “addr:housenumber”.
You cannot add them has “names” because they are not names; and if they
are just your personal numbering scheme and not currently visibly
marked on the houses, then you cannot add them to OSM in any form.
What you can do, however, is adding the houses themselves to OSM, and
create the labelling via an instance of the “umap” service where you can
add data to a private copy of the map (that you can share with others)
without adding unverifiable data to OSM. Once the buildings receive -
and display! - official numbering, you can add that to OSM in the
addr:housenumber tag.
I would like to point out that OSM contains a lot of information that is not visible on the objects. References to external systems such as postal codes, road and network classifications, websites… So an absolute “no you can’t put an identifying number in, because of ground truth” is too harsh. A ref:xyz=… where xyz is a publicly verifiable external system, organisation or project is not too bad, I think, especially if it leads in the end to on the ground verifyable details.
That said, why not turn it around and register the OSM id’s of the objects in your project database where you undoubtedly keep more non-OSM (project linked) details about the objects.
Yes but it is the starting point. Ground truth is where we start. And yes we do make some exceptions if there are good reasons for it. But in this particular case, it is one person’s private project, the identifiers are not visible or even verifiable by anyone else, and to make matters worse they have been put in the “name” tag…
I would say that the requirements are: the objects should actually exist; the external identifiers should be in a ref:externalsystem tag; the external system should be publicly accessible for verification of the identifiers; and the project should address a public goal, eventually leading to improvement of the map.
And, the other option, to include the OSM id in the project database, would be preferable!