Open Addresses

Aug 5, 2014 | address, Open Source GIS, OpenStreetMap

I’m old. I think today I’ve talked about AMLs, watershed Analysis, digitizing tables, and now I’m going to cap that off with something completely different. I should just say I’m well seasoned instead of old.

I’m getting used to “open data”. You hear it more and more and as I complained in one of my last blog posts open is only great if you can find the data.

I’m never exactly sure what a “open data ecosystem” is or if I would know if I ran into it….BUT – the US Open Data Institute is putting up a bounty for US Addresses. Which makes me chuckle a bit – and not in a bad way. The data gets fed into the OpenAddresses Initiative which, had I been paying more attention, I believe spun out of addressing in OpenStreetMap. The address file is up to 500 something Mb (you can download it). Well this fixes the last problem of finding the data.

I’m not sure of the familiarity of the local government with GitHub. I’m working my way into it. I’m pretty sure if someone from a local Gov’t asked someone at OpenAddresses they would probably help aforementioned local gov’t format the data into an acceptable form. Given the work I did last year with addressing…I can’t imagine a coherent file of address data. BUT….if you look at the map it’s happening. If you notice the SE US is particularly bare. That should be fixed.

So – upload your addresses. Learn some json. Learn a little “Git off my lawn hub”. Contribute.

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