What is special about Geospatial?

An open and downloadable address dataset is useful for many geospatial applications. Therefore the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz has developed a platform where users can enter own addresses for benefit of the whole community. Recently FH Kärnten has adopted this idea to create a address dataset for Austria. Until now less than 100 addresses are stored but this could change soon. You can add addresses at the homepage of the portal: http://www.openaddresses.at

Since Google provides a very sophisticated geocoding function including most of the addresses in Austria the success of this project is questionable. One advantage of OpenAdresses is the possibility to download the dataset as CSV or XML. We will see how big the growth of will be.

The Idea:

In the last few years web applications have integrated users more and more in the design, the processing and gathering of information.
Some of the these applicatins are Wikis and famous sites such as youtube, etc.
We had the idea at our institute of launching an experiment to collect a complete set of geocoded address information for Switzerland. This data is supposed to

• be freely available to all interested companies or private persons and may be used at no license fee
• be captured and maintained by the Web Community
• store not only the details of an address but their co-ordinates as well.

Of course there is already a complete geocoded address dataset for the whole of Switzerland - but it is fairly expensive. With the OpenAddress idea we want
to investigate whether it is possible to create such an comprehensive dataset based both on the most recent technologies and the Web Community.
We believe that the more people there are who join in, the less the effort of each individual will be. If many, many people help with their very local know-how, we will be able to achieve this goal.
Besides: it is very easy: just click on the map and enter the details of an address - that’s it. Or use a list of addresses and go sequentially through it.

Of course we would like the individual to collect and enter more than just one address:
This could be: Addresses of the places where you work, you live, meet your friends, have your hair cut or your teeth checked, the most famous restaurant, as well as the most famous restaurant and other popular locations etc.

A few comments:

• Whoever needs many addresses should collect and enter many. This is especially meant for companies who will use this data in a commercial environment.
• The project is based on trust: We neither check nor log what is collected and entered.
• The project is based on the “open” philosophy which also works in the area of open source software: the community is responsible for quality and completeness.
• Do invite colleagues to join in and help - the more the better!
• Keep informed and use the ’statistics’ option to follow the progress.

As stated before: it is an experiment. But we believe it will work - with your help!

What will this address information be used for?
Many applications and solutions in the area of geographic context need highly detailed data. Full address data including georeference is part of it.

[via: http://www.openaddresses.at]

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.