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We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk

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Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#151

Post by shiandow »

creesch wrote: post #121
NeoTar wrote: post #48

Some context, for people not located in the UK - A full British postcode typically aims to cover around 15 buildings (sometime a single building, sometimes a street of 50 houses). This is in contrast to many other postal code systems which cover relatively broad areas). Or to put it another way - UK - 2,643,732 codes, 1 code per 25 people, USA - 41,700 codes, 1 code per 8000 people, Germany - 8,200 codes, 1 code per…

Dutch post codes actually do specify the street. It's four digits and two letters. The digits cover an area (can be a city, town, neighborhood) and the letters cover the specific street or part of the street. Technically, they cover a range of house numbers, which in 99.9% of the cases is (part of) a street. So just like in the UK a postcode is enough to get you pretty close. A postcode and house number will get you…

In the Netherlands the situation wasn't too far removed from the situation the UK is in now. The postal codes are managed by a private company (PostNL), and while the details are scarce and hard to find there was a fight between them and the government party responsible for managing addresses over who got had the rights to the postal codes data (see [1] for the current truce).

[1]: https://www.geobasisregistraties.nl/basisregistraties/docume...

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#152

Post by mywacaday »

NeoTar wrote: post #48

Some context, for people not located in the UK - A full British postcode typically aims to cover around 15 buildings (sometime a single building, sometimes a street of 50 houses). This is in contrast to many other postal code systems which cover relatively broad areas). Or to put it another way - UK - 2,643,732 codes, 1 code per 25 people, USA - 41,700 codes, 1 code per 8000 people, Germany - 8,200 codes, 1 code per…

You can put Ireland at the top of the list, one postcode for every address, every house has one, every apartment has one, every building has one, even some old ruins have one.

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#153

Post by justinclift »

This doesn't seem correct:

    The problem is it’s not an easy dataset to get hold of, as it cost a lot of money.
    This is because the data has to be licensed from Royal Mail ...
It seems to be talking about the National Statistics Postcode Lookup UK, which is officially published here: https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/7ec10db7-c8f4-4a40-8d82-8921...

It's been there from at least 2017, which is when I first came across it.

There are later version of the data set online too: https://open-geography-portalx-ons.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/o...

The license: https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/licences

    Under the terms of the Open Government Licence and UK Government Licensing Framework
    (launched 30 September 2010), if you wish to use or re-use ONS material, whether
    commercially or privately, you may do so freely without a specific application for a
    licence, subject to the conditions of the Open Government Licence and the Framework.
    If you are reproducing ONS content you must include a source accreditation to ONS.
If the article is talking about a different postcode address file though, then the above doesn't apply. ;)

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#154

Post by moring »

darrenf wrote: post #150
moring wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does OpenStreetMap solve it? OSM, more specifically OSM Nominatim, shows postcodes. Example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?lat=53.151778&lon=-1.16...

I didn't know the answer so I looked it up. Nominatim gets postcodes from Ordnance Survey: https://nominatim.org/release-docs/3.4/data-sources/GB-Postc... Specifically Code-Point Open: https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/products/code-point-open which is updated quarterly, and in turn gets the postcodes from Royal Mail.

It seems to me that you can download the postcode list freely: https://osdatahub.os.uk/downloads/open/CodePointOpen

Something is missing here. If OS already has that data from RM and can make it available freely, why would they need to build another database?

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#155

Post by b112 »

DHolzer wrote: post #120
b112 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not fully getting it. I said with clarity that I know it's pointing back to his website. But any website with a click-bait title of 'One small trick" or some such, is a scammy, clickbaitish site.

Any negative aspect of media from the past can, and often will, be transformed into a positive trait in future media. People embrace vinyl records in an age of digital music. They take photos with analog cameras even though everyone has a phone in their pocket. Musicians use the harsh artifacts of MP3 compression as creative effects in their music. The examples are countless, and they all emerge precisely when the me…

Nothing you cited has anything to do with emulating scam artists and clickbait boneheads, and trying to claim acting like a clickbait artist is all the rage, is invalid.

However, your commandments to not provide my opinion, predicated upon your opinion, is the gold standard in ridiculousness.

Way over the line.

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#156

Post by jokethrowaway »

Or we can just start using https://what3words.com/ and geolocation.

I disagree with the report, I think it's feasible with a bit of creativity.

The government also has this: https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/091feb1c-aea6-45c9-82bf-768a...

We could also start with an imperfect solution, offer it as a free API (maybe even self-hosted and communicating with other services p2p) and wait for users to select or insert missing addresses, until we eventually converge to a good OSS database. If it's a single service being shared by everyone, you would need to insert your address once and then it would be part of the database forever, and you would get the right result at any other time in the future.

There is also a dirty but hard to attack option: - Start from the NAG - Build an opaque AI process which is hard to audit and that is tuned until it produces a result close to PAF but with a few extra errors - Sell the new database to the government, government open sources that - Directors get paid their share - Company get sued out of existance by RoyalMail - Government pays a few millions in 20 years, if the RoyalMail experts can prove anything in court

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#157

Post by jokethrowaway »

justinclift wrote: post #153

This doesn't seem correct: The problem is it’s not an easy dataset to get hold of, as it cost a lot of money. This is because the data has to be licensed from Royal Mail ... It seems to be talking about the National Statistics Postcode Lookup UK, which is officially published here: https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/7ec10db7-c8f4-4a40-8d82-8921... It's been there from at least 2017, which is when I first came across it.…

That's not the https://www.poweredbypaf.com/product/paf/

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#158

Post by NeoTar »

TomK32 wrote: post #135
NeoTar wrote: post #48

Some context, for people not located in the UK - A full British postcode typically aims to cover around 15 buildings (sometime a single building, sometimes a street of 50 houses). This is in contrast to many other postal code systems which cover relatively broad areas). Or to put it another way - UK - 2,643,732 codes, 1 code per 25 people, USA - 41,700 codes, 1 code per 8000 people, Germany - 8,200 codes, 1 code per…

8,200 in Germany is way too low, and I'll add some fun facts. According to Wikipedia 30,000 of the theoretical 98,901 are currently in use. The number of people per postcode does vary a lot, from zero (no one lives in a company that has its own postcode) to none living in a demolished village of Billmuthausen (right on the inner-German border) or the two people living in a district that had no postcode until the prob…

Sorry - I was lazy and just asked ChatGPT for "how many German postal codes are there"!

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#159

Post by justinclift »

mywacaday wrote: post #152
NeoTar wrote: post #48

Some context, for people not located in the UK - A full British postcode typically aims to cover around 15 buildings (sometime a single building, sometimes a street of 50 houses). This is in contrast to many other postal code systems which cover relatively broad areas). Or to put it another way - UK - 2,643,732 codes, 1 code per 25 people, USA - 41,700 codes, 1 code per 8000 people, Germany - 8,200 codes, 1 code per…

You can put Ireland at the top of the list, one postcode for every address, every house has one, every apartment has one, every building has one, even some old ruins have one.

Sounds like the IPv6 version of postcodes. ;)

Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File

#160

Post by mywacaday »

justinclift wrote: post #159
mywacaday wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put Ireland at the top of the list, one postcode for every address, every house has one, every apartment has one, every building has one, even some old ruins have one.

Sounds like the IPv6 version of postcodes. ;)

except they did it with 7 characters :)
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