EDIT: The app is now available on Github.

https://github.com/IpswichMapper/SwiftAddress/releases

You can find the APK under “assets”.

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When I intended wanted to map housenumbers in my area, I found out about the app “Keypad-Mapper 3”. This seems like the most efficient way to map housenumbers, as it is designed for that purpose.

However, after downloading (from F-droid archive repository), I found out that it didn’t work. The app had not been updated in 7 years, so no wonder that was to case. Luckily however, online I found a fork of Keypad-Mapper 3 with hungarian translations which worked.

After doing one giant survey with this app, however, I quickly realised how much of a pain it can become to try and clean up the raw data in JOSM. GPS data isn’t really the most accurate thing, and therefore the positions of housenumber nodes (which are based on your GPS position) collected from Keypad Mapper isn’t that accurate either.

This survey took me multiple weeks and multiple changesets to clean up. It was a mess.

I then started to look for alternatives: Streetcomplete seemed like the best option and I did a few surveys with it. However, mapping housenumbers wasn’t the most efficient thing on this app. So I opened a issue on Streetcomplete’s Github repository to try and improve the app. This lead to a increment button which adds/substracts one number from the previous housenumber you entered.

This was quite useful, but it doesn’t work for both sides of the road. Streetcomplete housenumber mapping also requires that you have drawn buildings first, which can be tedious (here is my diary entry explaining how to speed it up slightly).

Then, I heard about OSMpad. This is an old application which is no longer available. However, I liked the design. OSMpad starts up as a map: you then add a housenumber on the map when surveying.

This would obviously lead to cleaner and more accurate data compared to Keypad Mapper, and would not require adding building data.

… See full entry

EDIT: This imagery will only be out of copyright from the end of 2022 (in other words, we will be able to use it in 2023). Also in 2023, building and housenumber imagery from 1940s to 1960s will be released for the whole of England and Wales

As anyone mapping in the UK knows, in most areas housenumber coverage is abysmal. For example, in osm, germany has 14 million housenumbers, USA has 10 million and the UK has about 1.6 million (as of 2018).

Therefore, an open data source of housenumbers would make it significantly easier to add housenumbers. The only other method is surveys, which is slow and tedious and can only really be done over a small area.

It just came to my attention that an out-of-copyright map from the National Library of Scotland of housenumbers and buildings in London is available for OSM. This is a old map, that was surveyed from 1944-1967.

Due to this, lots of construction and destruction has taken place since then, so in some areas of London, this map will not be useful. However, many buildings have remained the same since then, and if that case this map provides a far, far quicker way of mapping housenumbers compared to going out and surveying them yourself.

To test the imagery, follow these steps (in JOSM):

1. Imagery –> Rectified Image
2. Select “Custom WMS Link”
3. Enter the following string into the textbox (including the “tms:” part): tms:https://geo.nls.uk/mapdata3/os/ldn_tile/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png

This map extends to Brighton and Southend, although it does not provide housenumbers in those areas, only buildings. (However, for some reason housenumbers are present in the districts west of Brighton, e.g Worthing)

If you want examples of this imagery being used, user Spiregrain has mapped significant sections of “Stratford New Town” in London using this imagery. I mapped some housenumbers in Sheerness using this imagery.

… See full entry

This post will cover how to enter housenumbers quickly, and how to tag them in such a way that any mapper using streetcomplete will get tasks to tag the buildings as housenumbers.

This post assumes that you use JOSM. This is also focusing mainly on drawing suburban housing in the UK, as this post draws from my current experiences. A lot of this post may not be applicable everywhere else, but some of it could be useful to you.

What I will cover:

• Streetcomplete housenumber quest preparation
• BuildingTools (tips and tricks)
• Lasso/free Select & Utilsplugin2
• Terracer
• Extrude Tool
• JOSM Copy & Paste (+ adjustment, such as rotate/resize)

Streetcomplete tagging

Streetcomplete is an easy to use app for android (and maybe for IOS soon) that allows users who have no understanding of openstreetmap to contribute to the map. However, due to this nature of data input (tasks), it can only improve on already existing data.

One of the critical missing pieces of data in the UK is housenumbers. This has to be entered manually. Currently, it isn’t really something a beginner can do, due to the methods of surveying housenumbers requiring intermediate knowledge of openstreetmap. There are not that many intermediate mappers, and since housenumbers/housenames are present on every single house, geography limits how many housenumbers a intermediate mapper can map.

However, on the other hand, anyone can make 1000s of buildings quickly using JOSM. Once this is done correctly, housenumber quests will show up when someone installs StreetComplete. What is effectively means is anyone, even people without any understanding of OSM, can map housenumbers, which is critical data.

In order to make buildings show up as housenumber quests in Streetcomplete, they CANNOT be tagged “building=yes”

Rather, this is the tagging I use & recommend:

1. building=house
2. addr:street=xyz

It is essential to tag the “building=house” tag. Otherwise the streetcomplete quest will not show up.

… See full entry