Tagging an address with no associated building?

General talk Tagging general discussion
1

Apologies if this is already discussed, but searching on here turns up lots of results for import proposals.

Situation

I work for a County, and we are the authoritative source for addresses. We want to add these to OSM when we assign them, to ensure that OSM has the most current, complete address coverage in our area.

We will often assign addresses for, say, a residential neighborhood, months before the buildings are actually built. In some cases, the developer runs into issues, and the addresses can sit for years with nothing really there.

From the County’s perspective, these are still officially assigned addresses. Nothing distinguishes them from addresses assigned to built and occupied structures.

From my perspective, I feel like “there’s literally nothing at this address” is worth noting. But I’m always willing to be wrong.

Questions

Is “there’s nothing here” an attribute worth tagging?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
If there’s nothing at an address, is the address point worth mapping in OSM?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

If tagged, how?

I like to think there’s a tag for everything, but are there any existing tags in use that might help here? I couldn’t see anything promising on TagInfo.

These addresses are approved, not proposed, and any kind of construction namespacing or similar would apply to the building, not the address.

Or is it simply a case of context? “There’s something here” could be derived from the point being on, in, or near other features, I suppose.

I’m open to suggestions or comments! Thanks!

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Just so that I’m clear, the address is assigned to like, a lot of land, without a building? Is the location of the hopefully-future building known, such that the address node could be roughly in the center of where it will eventually mean? Or would it need to be in just marking some larger place (and thus the location would not make quite as much sense once the buildings are added)?

3

We don’t normally map property or lot boundaries. If one did, then the address could go on that. But for a mapper walking through a neighborhood, especially without fences assumed to be on a property line, lot boundaries are not something a volunteer mapper can confirm.

What I do in the neighborhood where we have a cabin and there are lots of vacant lots is just put a point/node with the address tags on it. I may not know how deep the vacant lot is but I can often figure out how much street frontage there is so I usually put the point close to the road and about 1/2 along the street frontage. My logic is that if someone wants to drive to that address that is about where they’d want to end up at.

You probably have addresses associated with lots in your GIS data. As long as the lots are fairly regular in shape you may just be able to centroid the lot outline and put a point/node with the address information there. That falls apart some in rural areas with very large lots with small road frontage but it should work in many areas.

2 Likes
4

Great, thanks! :+1:

As in Node: 8971290079 | OpenStreetMap

1 Like
5

Yes, the developer submits a subdivision plan with each lot laid out, and information like the typical building setting within the lot. Assigned addresses are placed in each lot roughly where a future building will go. Unless it’s an odd-shaped lot, the assigned point almost always falls within the building area later on, and often the address points are not adjusted after the initial placement.

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6

So, we already have all the points in our own layer. (And the lots actually get their site address attribute from the point(s) that fall in it.) I’m working on a proper conflation to see which OSM points need adding / adjusting to reach parity with the County data, but I’m finding lots of undeveloped lots with addresses on them.

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Would also ask you to please look at both Organised Editing - OpenStreetMap Wiki & Import/Guidelines - OpenStreetMap Wiki & follow along by writing things up so anybody else can see what you’re doing.

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We added our department to the table at Organised Editing/Activities - OpenStreetMap Wiki. That was some time ago, however. Should specific mapping efforts get their own write-up?

Kendall County, Illinois

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No, that’s all great.

Thanks!

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There’s a tag that says “there’s nothing actually there”. It’s physically_present=no. It’s mostly used on bus stops in the UK and I suppose it’s a way to tell other mappers not to delete a bus stop location just because they don’t see anything on the ground.

So for these addresses, you are saying there is literally nothing on the ground? No letter box or similar? Is there any way that another mapper can verify the address? (Is your county GIS the only source? Is the address data available under an open licence?)

11

Here is an example of another organized editing activity related to addresses:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities/City_of_Castle_Pines,_CO_US#Address_Update

12

Thank you! I knew there was probably something.

That’s correct, there’s literally nothing there to confirm the address. A bit of a verifiability problem.

Municipalities may also maintain copies of the data, and parcel site addresses are in the property tax records as well, but we’re the primary source.

We release address point data as Public Domain, but long-term, we’d like to just maintain the data primarily in OSM and do away with conflating between separate sources.