Hello, I would like to extract nodes from OpenStreetMap, but I noticed most of them are just lat lon pairs. I would like to reverse geocode them, possibly with Nominatim. Is there an API way to contrib back the reverse geocoded node data to the node? asked 07 Jan '21, 17:44  giorgio79 |
One Answer:
That would be very bad. Don't do it. Nominatim will sometimes make "best guesses" when doing reverse geocoding, and these guesses must not be used to generate statements about reality and load them into the database. Also, if Nominatim is able to reverse geocode something that is good enough for us, we don't need that information replicated thousands of times with every node! answered 07 Jan '21, 18:14  Frederik Ramm ♦ |
I guess we can reverse your answer, and ask why reverse geocode a node thousand of times when you can have the address in it once, and reject geocoding if address data exists. If address is a best guess, then it could be indicated.
Without admin boundaries Nominatim makes guesses based on distance which of the surrounding towns and postcode an address belongs to. There's many small flaws like if a road crosses state boundaries a house can get assigned to the wrong state. Such guessed data has no value to be added permanently.