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For business reasons, we research and assign admin centers to all admin boundaries (currently in Europe) within our own database, where either there is none or the existing causes problems on routing. Is it possible or would someone be interested to help to assign those in OSM where OSM does not have an admin center for the boundary? This is bulk data, if we'd have to do it manually, that would be too time consuming.

We do assign the admin center with a focus on navigation (street). I understand some admin center information may be provided by "official sources", but we have had cases where that was "off street", causing incorrect routing. And until an official source is available, it's better to have "something" (reasonably useful) than nothing...?

asked 18 Oct '16, 13:24

Osm_ccom's gravatar image

Osm_ccom
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I doubt that it is a good idea to move existing admin centers because your routing algorithm has problems with "off street" nodes.

As for the missing ones: many people have their own projects, be it adding house numbers or benches or... All of them take plenty of time to add and maintain. So I wonder whether a request like this have much impact.

Furthermore, this is a Q&A site, asking for help to map a certain feature in a certain region, you might have better luck on local fora or mailing lists.

(19 Oct '16, 07:07) escada

escada, it is NOT my idea to move anything, just to add where there is none, such doing what OPEN means, to support and help to improve the data for ALL.

IF there is an offset to the official, there might be interest to review to improve OSM for all.

We work on municipalities, missing admin center means we calculate something. Then bugfix. I heard from mapping users they have the same problem (not only on OSM). As such I thought to HELP. But 130K municipalities you can't check and do by hand. And I don't seek "local support" as this is a global issue.

Other discussions i.e. on OSRM are about airports, national parks, etc., also missing such nodes. Worldwide. But that's another issue. Admin Center is an existing geopoint in OSM that's just not well maintained. In the core area of just Germany, Austria and Switzerland we talk about more than 10000 missing admin centers...

(19 Oct '16, 16:52) Osm_ccom

"IF there is an offset to the official, there might be interest to review to improve OSM for all." Keep in mind that the official boundary data can also be wrong. Don't blindly correct OSM data just because it differs from official data.

(19 Oct '16, 17:02) scai ♦

@scai, we have that experience and meanwhile work with data received from the national cadastre offices for our layers. We still use OSM to review and also to display our maps. But we started off using OSM data and I simply thought we could help.

Again. If anyone can and is interested to help us to bulk-add the "admin centers" we researched, to the municipalities that have no admin centers associated, such improving OSM ... Please contact us.

(19 Oct '16, 17:15) Osm_ccom
2

So contact the German, Austrian and Swiss communities via the mailing lists and fora. You might get a better response than here.

(19 Oct '16, 19:58) escada

@escada. You don't get it. We cover Europe and add more. More than 30 countries and growing. This is NOT a regional issue. The three countries were EXAMPLES to show that this is nothing for individual update. No matter how you try to make it one and discourage me to help. If you have helpful, constructive reply, you're welcome. Else, let people answer (or not) who might be interested in offering solutions.

Side note: Assigning our "admin center" manually so it makes sense, we cover some 100 per hour. You can imagine the workload/knowledge. This is what we offer to share, hoping someone a little more visionary understanding the issue and helping us improving OSM might respond.

(20 Oct '16, 00:15) Osm_ccom
2

@Osm_ccom as a first step you could consider publishing something like http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/unmapped#2/23.7/3.5 showing the data you have that is not yet in OSM (there's some more info about that map here: http://neis-one.org/2016/06/unmapped-places-osm/ ). I don't mean to compare your data to the data shown on that map, just the presentation, using javascript to layer the data of interest over tiles.

I guess even before that you would need to think about the provenance of the data. If some of it comes from sources that are not compatible with the license OSM is shared under, then it isn't suitable for contribution to OSM.

In general, there's no click-done interface for bulk adding data to OSM, for a variety of reasons. There's some guidelines discussed here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines . So to follow those guidelines, you either need to be prepared to do it yourselves or find people that are interested in doing it, that's why escada is suggesting making contact with local communities.

(20 Oct '16, 01:12) maxerickson
1

Indeed, contact the local communities because no one but a local mapper knows better where the "center" of the village/town/etc is. This is not always where the city hall is.

I my first reply I already said that you had to contact local communities. In my second I replied to your example. I know you have a list places all around the world. I would also like to know what you define as admin center for a place. I would also love to see a map of places where it is missing. Should be easy with Overpass Turbo.

Please make some maps/tools to show the missing data, then contact local communities via any channel but this Q&A site. Then let the locals fill in the gaps, you don't need an external source for that IMHO.

(20 Oct '16, 04:23) escada
showing 5 of 8 show 3 more comments

With such a dataset, it can be helpful first to make it available publicly, and to document the way it was obtained. That way, the community can:

  • check if the data source is suitable for OSM copyright - wise

  • check if the data is worth it

  • discuss the best way to integrate it in OSM, importing by you maybe, but there is also other ways you are not aware off.

permanent link

answered 22 Oct '16, 10:35

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yvecai
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accept rate: 9%

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question asked: 18 Oct '16, 13:24

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last updated: 22 Oct '16, 10:35

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