NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum

When I searched for my street address, the map came up correctly, but the database says that Evatt is in Canberra, New South Wales, and has a postcode of 2913. This is not correct. Canberra is in the Australian Capital Territory, and Evatt has a postcode of 2617. I would be happy to correct entries for Canberra in the database, but I cannot see how to do this.

asked 09 May '13, 00:42

tgf's gravatar image

tgf
26112
accept rate: 0%


If you go to http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=691939, then you can see that both Evatt and Canberra are mapped as nodes. For places that are mapped as nodes some guesses are made as to what area belongs to them and to what areas they belong. If you want more accurate results, then you need to map the actual borders. The same goes for the postcodes.

permanent link

answered 09 May '13, 01:32

cartinus's gravatar image

cartinus
7.0k1066105
accept rate: 27%

edited 09 May '13, 01:33

I was able to find the borders for Western Australia on a government web service. So we need to find the borders for ACT suburbs in a similar manner?

(09 May '13, 08:59) Russkel
1

borders or boundary lines from government websites or similar may only be used for OSM purposes if you are allowed to use that data for OSM.

So you have to find out what licence is used when the government service is publishing its map.

Maybe there is a growing data offering in a local opendata service?

(09 May '13, 16:47) stephan75

According to this wiki page, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has given permission for ABS data to be imported. This is also apparently where other importers have got suburb boundaries from. I'll look into doing an import.

Edit: Hmmm, it seems WA doesn't have suburb areas either. Seems no one reimported the boundaries after the redaction?

(10 May '13, 04:11) Russkel

I have been to the web address that you indicated but it is not clear to me how to edit the information that is wrong. The problem that I was highlighting is not the borders of the suburbs, though that may possibly be useful, but rather that when I search for an address in Evatt, the address that is returned is "Evatt, Canberra, New South Wales". Canberra is not in New South Wales but rather is in Australian Capital Territory (ACT). ACT is wholly enclosed by New South Wales but has a distinct administration.

The next problem is the reported postcode. The postcode for Evatt is 2617, not 2913.

These seem to be text entries in a database rather than spatial data.

(13 May '13, 00:46) tgf
1

The link posted by cartinus shows that Nominatim (our currently used address search engine) only finds a Canberra node. A node has no information about the boundary and consequently Nominatim tries to guess the boundary as already explained. In order to fix it you have to add the actual boundary for Canberra to the map or at least a rough estimation.

If the post code is wrong then just add the correct post code to the place node of Evatt. Currently there is none.

It's all right there in the link :).

(13 May '13, 07:24) scai ♦
Your answer
toggle preview

Follow this question

By Email:

Once you sign in you will be able to subscribe for any updates here

By RSS:

Answers

Answers and Comments

Markdown Basics

  • *italic* or _italic_
  • **bold** or __bold__
  • link:[text](http://url.com/ "title")
  • image?![alt text](/path/img.jpg "title")
  • numbered list: 1. Foo 2. Bar
  • to add a line break simply add two spaces to where you would like the new line to be.
  • basic HTML tags are also supported

Question tags:

×118
×19
×15

question asked: 09 May '13, 00:42

question was seen: 4,623 times

last updated: 13 May '13, 07:24

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum