National Postcodes to be introduced

thirty-six dragons

Sponge Bob wrote: »

You can experiment with the last census, eg rented houses vis a vis empty houses per ED

Data!

http://census.cso.ie/Census/TableViewer/tableView.aspx?ReportId=1344

http://census.cso.ie/Census/TableViewer/tableView.aspx?ReportId=76536

This data is for personal use only so I won't be including it in any proof-of-concept; however since the OpenPostcode translates immediately into a longitude and latitude it is trivial to make it work with any other system of definitions.

It may be interesting to make a directory of basic mappings for the short four character area-codes and political and county divisions - but it's work for someone else I think. It goes beyond the definition of a location/postcode into further analysis. But since it is all opensource it is free for anyone to do. Unlike other codes which will leave you guessing until the next revolution ... 2016 anyone?

Sponge Bob

iantheteacher wrote: »

This data is for personal use only so I won't be including it in any proof-of-concept

No, the CSO supplied shape file is the smoothed variant. This is in the public domain as a tool for statistical analysis of any CSO Census data....even if you add extra layers it is OK as long as one single census dataset ...number of inhabitable houses for example, is already in there.

Census data is public once you acknowledge it and you should normally acknowledge the CSO "with thanks" . If you want a shapefile of precise ED boundaries you must contact the OSI for it , good luck.

Read.

http://census.cso.ie/censusasp/saps/boundaries/eds_bound.htm

There are 3,440 legally defined EDs in the State. One ED, St. Mary's, straddles the Louth-Meath county border, and is presented in two parts in the SAPS tables, with one part in Louth and the other in Meath. There are 32 EDs with low population, which for reasons of confidentiality have been amalgamated into neighbouring EDs giving a total of 3,409 EDs which appear in the SAPS tables.
The graphic file contains the boundaries for 3,409 EDs in addition to administrative county and province boundaries. The boundaries have been smoothed in accordance with our licencing agreement with OSi Ireland. These boundaries are for general information only and any individual or organisation downloading them are required to acknowledge the terms and conditions under which they are made available.

The 32 low population EDs are listed in the shapefile as they are concatenated to a next door ED. Their boundaries are shown on the Electoral Area maps below and you may guess a boundary for them yourself and edit into the shapefile by hand except there is no Census data for them for privacy reasons. Whiddy Island in Bantry Bay is one of the 32

The CSO puts smaller datasets on the Townland level, into Geodirectory. This is not and will not be in the public domain for a long time. After this census the 2006 small area data in geodirectory will disappear until 2106 although the ED data will continue in the public domain.

http://www.electoralareacommittees.ie/

LordSutch

Just to add and to clarify my stance on post codes, I think Post codes are a great idea, I'm a big fan, but I would also welcome an official Post code launch date, (no half baked jobbie) embraced by some of the population, while the other half take to another version!

I welcome the official Irish Post code launch date, whenever that is ?

thirty-six dragons

Sponge Bob wrote: »

No, the CSO supplied shape file is the smoothed variant. This is in the public domain as a tool for statistical analysis of any CSO Census data....even if you add extra layers it is OK as long as one single census dataset ...number of inhabitable houses for example, is already in there.

Census data is public once you acknowledge it and you should normally acknowledge the CSO "with thanks" . If you want a shapefile of precise ED boundaries you must contact the OSI for it , good luck.

Read.

http://census.cso.ie/censusasp/saps/boundaries/eds_bound.htm



The 32 low population EDs are listed in the shapefile as they are concatenated to a next door ED. Their boundaries are shown on the Electoral Area maps below and you may guess a boundary for them yourself and edit into the shapefile by hand except there is no Census data for them for privacy reasons. Whiddy Island in Bantry Bay is one of the 32

The CSO puts smaller datasets on the Townland level, into Geodirectory. This is not and will not be in the public domain for a long time. After this census the 2006 small area data in geodirectory will disappear until 2106 although the ED data will continue in the public domain.

http://www.electoralareacommittees.ie/

I take your points - it's interesting - but outside the bounds of my project to work on an opensource postcode. The openpostcode definition allows for straightforward mapping between coordinates and the code - after that people can do anything they already do with any geolocation data. http://tinyurl.com/openpostcode

(The main point being that loc8code and gocode currently are not anywhere as useful.)

As for demonstrating granularity, how many people are expected to live within each 3 metre radius? Any more granular and if a fella put on weight over Christmas he'd need to get on to the postcode "manager" (sheesh!) for a re-assignment.

BTW, can you reply to a tender with a big fat zero? Imagine how they'd have to skew the criteria to make sure someone got a cheque for lesser capable code! It would be funny to see.

Sponge Bob

iantheteacher wrote: »

BTW, can you reply to a tender with a big fat zero? Imagine how they'd have to skew the criteria to make sure someone got a cheque for lesser capable code! It would be funny to see.

Yes you can but you would be much better off wangling an invitation to the Committee on Communications to offer them your system gratis and save them the cost of tendering and consultants reports. You get 20 minutes to make the sale.

They plan on spending millions on this .....generally subsidising those useless tossers in an Post for a grossly substandard system I should think.

Your current offering is too high level for the crud we tend to elect to the Dáil and especially to the Seanad. I suggest you embellish it with a few practical examples, that's all. C**s think Geocoding is about letter delivery.

antoinolachtnai

The Committe's role is Parliamentary oversight. It has no role, or at most a very indirect role in government policy and decisions.

Sponge Bob

People still pitch to them and of course Postcodes will be on the agenda for a meeting some time soon. Handing over a perfectly formed free and open source solution is not to be sniffed at.

Some of us are well able to earwig certain members of that committee, Tremelo is probably an old mate of Mattie McGraths

thirty-six dragons

I'm afraid I would respectfully have to leave such campaigning to someone who is in the know. I have entirely explained the code and it's benefits and created a number of different proofs-of-concept: including an online mapping tool, a batch conversion spreadsheet, and simpler spreadsheet interface - demonstrating that without any extra software the code can be calculated and "de-calculated". I have outlined the features of the code. I have outlined the possibilities for a geolocation code. I have outlined why I believe a closed-source code is no more useful than random junk. I would certainly tender an opensource code - but not sure if I'd be happy to take on all the work myself.

Sponge Bob

See thats the funny thing about Ireland, ya even gotta sell something free. :cool:

That is because officaldom would rather kick it out to their consultantcy mates who will always recommend something a mate of theirs has to sell and gets a kickback.

Officialdom hides behind consultant, everybody pays dearly.

Does nobody remember all the money spent on "Integrated Ticketing" in Dublin so far and I still can't get a train from Galway and a Luas to Sandyford...on one ticket. The consultants made 10s of millions all the same....for nothing of much use.

LordSutch

So at the rish of getting boring, when is the tender to be announced, and is the launch date this year or next year ?

long_b

I reckon using OpenPostcode is a fantastic idea.

Here's the email address for Howlin's suggestion scheme for stopping our government from wasting our money.

http://per.gov.ie/comprehensive-review-of-expenditure/

If you like you can send an email to expenditurereview@per.gov.ie, subject Communications.

Here's the link to include

http://sites.google.com/site/openpostcode

recedite

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Grand. There will be a tender for a Postcode System once the Postcode Manager is appointed off the last tender early this year ...therefore the granularity of the Codes vis a vis population and households to be released as CSO Census data must be demonstrable.

Its all becoming clearer now, the bureaucrats want to codify the electoral district areas (and the census small areas based on the former). And then get the citizens to use these codes as part of their address. This will make compiling statistics easier.
And for this they have held back the country for years. For this they will cost the taxpayer millions of euro, with unknown future maintenance costs. Surely the civil servants could devise an application that would convert the location based codes (whether open source or a nationalised Loc8 version) into the electoral district's "moveable granularity" instead?
ED's can and do have their boundaries revised. Co-ordinate based locations cannot change and therefore require no maintenance.

iantheteacher wrote: »

since the OpenPostcode translates immediately into a longitude and latitude it is trivial to make it work with any other system of definitions.

They want to superimpose a location code onto an electoral district code. A mish-mash.

iantheteacher wrote: »

Indeed. And imagine appointing a postcode manager! Like I need a manager to manage the name of my house....
If you ask me it's just another excuse to have someone make money from the public funds - about as useful to an economy as sucking your own ... thumb.

Now if I could get the lazy feckers to actually deliver my mail rather than drop a slip of paper in my mailbox way down the laneway say he "missed me" and that I should drive a 40km roundtrip to collect it then I'd be doing well.

This is exactly how 99% of the population feel, but it looks like we are going to be shafted yet again.

wreckless

if AnPost is semi state body, why dont the government just take what they own? the an post post code system and share it? why buy something you already own?

antoinolachtnai

Well, it isn't strictly a postcode. It's a database of addresses. There is a unique code for every building, but they aren't designed to be written on an envelope.

You need a database of addresses for any type of code. But the idea of not buying something you already own is a good one.

wreckless

indeed. they have their own internal system, which they use, and so have probably been one the main reasons why we as a country do not have a national PC system. the an post management have probably told every minister down through the years theres no need for one. Sure Pat, our postie knows where all his areas are, the townslands and who lives where, no need to introduce a PC system !!! :rolleyes:

thirty-six dragons

I was admiring the UK's Ordnance Survey Code Point database today.

The UK postcode system is an old style, not very accurate, address database - invented long before we all used computers and GPS coordinates. As a result the database is an enormous unwieldy load of data containing 27.5 million addresses - this is not free to use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdom

Since 2010 however someone has seen the light and released the coordinates of all postcodes at http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/code-point-open/index.html (even then it's still an enormous database and not a simple calculation as this proposed OpenPostcode for Ireland is) free to use for planning and mapping and so many different uses.

"Code-Point® Open contains postcode units for Great Britain, each of which has a precise geographic location. There are approximately 1.7 million postcode units in England, Scotland and Wales. Each contains an average of fifteen adjoining addresses.
Ideal if you want to profile the crime rates or manage your assets (such as shops) within a specific area.

Statistical analysis
Market analysis and profiling
Sales targeting
Asset management
Route planning
Crime pattern analysis"

We have the ability now to skip the unwieldy database stage, skip the closed stage, and go right to the open, simple, free, elegant geolocation Open Postcode and not keep Ireland two steps behind everyone else in Europe. If you free up the data you free up innovation and enterprise.

http://tinyurl.com/OpenPostcode

None of the proprietary codes are going to allow the functionally of the UK Code Point database. We are going to put ourselves back in time again - copying closed systems that have been now discarded by others.

antoinolachtnai

I agree with you.

I don't understand where the OpenPostcode coordinates would come from, if not from a proprietary map or an address database.

Wouldn't it be better to have an open database of addresses too?

thirty-six dragons

They'd come from the same place as my address comes from. From me. I alone decided what my house is called.

But apart from that, as a national system, An Post already have the coordinates of every address. It's ready.

It would be naturally refined and grown as time went on - as people registered for property taxes, as houses were built, valued, as census addresses were automatically checked, etc., etc. It doesn't have to be spot on perfect on day one.

antoinolachtnai

Why not divide on the basis of small areas? Small areas are a natural division on the ground and houses with similar codes will always be part of the same group of houses.

The code should be open, all the way down to the house, not just to the area as it is in the UK.

The code doesn't have to go all the way down to the house at the very beginning.

You need a database of addresses either way.

thirty-six dragons

With all due respect; I'm not sure why the answer is always "but why don't you do this or that".

I've created my algorithm; it works. Everyone else feel free to create another.

Absolutely NO - a database isn't required. Why does no one get it. A geolocation code gives a god damn location. NO DATABASE REQUIRED. Unless of course you use one of the conbobulated excuses for geolocation codes that are irreversible algorithms - then you will NEED TO PAY to work out where someone is.

If I gave you my exact coordinates would you need a database?

What is it that you want to do with a postcode? Match it to an exact person? Coz, that's never going to happen and is not desirable.

And absolutely NO - there is no small area, no zone, no region, no county, no anything sub division that is not overlapping. I know of a house here that has a driveway in Limerick and a front door in Cork. Roads, houses, telephone poles, bridges, manholes, protected trees, ancient monuments, points of interest, windmills, people who fall on mountains - all happen in very random places that have nothing to do with imaginary straight lines on a toytown impression of a Postman Pat and his black and white cat.

The OpenPostcode algorithm does logically breakdown into regions and areas that all have similar codes. Your neighbour will have a similar code. You will be able to imagine your code is posh.

thirty-six dragons

I've just been admiring and testing An Post's GeoDirectory at http://www.geodirectory.ie/GeodirectoryMap.aspx

An Post already has 1.7 million addresses geocoded for their use. And it apparently works just fine. You can try it out; simply search for your address.

It beggars belief why we don't already have a postcode from this enormous and accurate database. It could be done today for free using a simple algorithm such as the OpenPostcode.

http://tinyurl.com/OpenPostcode

Absolute insanity if we end up with a closed source proprietary expensive system with licenses and administration and all manner of Quango building when the maths is trivial and the country is broke (of course, this is probably why we are broke).

Time An Post got a kick up the hole too from Government - all this treating them like they're a private company is a little obscene.

SPDUB

iantheteacher wrote: »

Time An Post got a kick up the hole too from Government - all this treating them like they're a private company is a little obscene.

That would be the Government giving itself a kick then since it's their instructions to be as commercial as a private company .

thirty-six dragons

And no harm in that either!

Solair

The sooner this rolls out the better!

I live close to Cork city centre and about 30% of my mail is misdelivered.

Despite numerous complaints to the postman, every single day, without fail, there are items of mail in my postbox that aren't for the right person or even the correct area of Cork!

I have taken to writing "please deliver to address actually printed on envelope " on the front and putting them back into the mail!

The postman also signs for registered items and leaves valuable packages in the flower bed in the rain!

I'm at the stage that I would personally lobby to have An Post sold off!

They can't seem to organise anything!

At least some kind of coding might remove the random "ah sure just chuck it into any postbox" factor!

kilkenny31

I only been reading this thread the last few days but here's my opinion is how it should be done. I think the reasons we are introducing post codes in the first place is more for the the benifit of GPS systems and sat navs incars then actually for our postal system. we should introduce a similar post code system used in Australia

The best thing Ireland could do is name every road in rural areas. So if a townsland is called ballyhack but up street signs and call it Ballyhack rd and give every house on that road a number, like they do in Australia. Even in rural Australia every house and farm has a number and the post code applies to an area. So for instance in Ireland we instead of having an address like

John Smith
Ballyhack
Castlemartyr
Co. Cork

It would become

John Smith
12 Ballyhack Rd
CK1234

and maybe put up street signs like the one bellow in cities and towns and in rural areas instead of the hard to read plaque on the wall we have now and no signs in rural areas.

spacetweek

Roads are not generally named in rural areas in Europe due to the massive amount of work this would entail - the rural road network is far denser in Europe than in Australia. Additionally numbering the buildings alongside is easier in the New World due to the fact that as settlement of those countries took place, all the land was divided into equally-sized square or rectangular lots. Addresses simply consisted of counting how many lots you were from the end of the road. This isn't the case in Europe - the lots are completely random. Councils would need to survey and number every lot, allowing for the future subdivision of a lot into two distinct addresses.

As for the plaques in cities, this is standard practice in Europe (except Germany). No reason to change it and the design of the plaques is iconic. However, some are missing or damaged in Dublin - this needs to be addressed with better oversight and maintenance schedules.

Solair

There's a lot of sense in putting street signs where people can actually see them. In France, there are quite a lot of areas which have both the plaques on the sides of buildings and signs on the streets themselves too. Mostly to highlight important streets that people need to know about.

I find Irish street signage very poor. It's often illegible from a car and sometimes even on foot. The signs are too high up and sometimes very hard to read as the fonts are too small.

Naming and numbering rural roads would be very difficult.
As pointed out above, they're not laid out in a logical way and houses are also often scattered very randomly in the countryside.
You would also quite likely find that there would be all sorts of complaints about cultural issues if you started to arbitrarily name roads. This was done in Northern Ireland and they were largely ignored.

I would however think that it's long past due that An Post insisted that people put a mail box on their gate way.
I find it ridiculous that Irish postmen/women have to walk up driveways, bend down to low letter boxes and even deal with psychopathic dogs.

If you don't have a mailbox on your gate ,the post office should just refuse to deliver. In many countries this would be the case.
It makes the whole delivery process much more streamlined and it would make the postman/woman's life much easier too.

Also, in urban areas, numbering of buildings should be rationalised and standardised and people putting stupid names on their houses and ignoring the number should simply not have their mail delivered.

There are streets in Cork where the numbers aren't even sequential!!

Also, office blocks and apartment complexes should still have a street building number.

E.g. you get things like

Mrs Anne Other
32 Celtic Tigre Towers
Jedward Street
Cork

Instead of :
Mrs Anne Other
Apt 32 Celtic Tigre House
40 Jedward Street
Cork

Same goes for commercial enterprises.

AIB Bank Centre
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4

Should be
AIB Bank Centre
101 Merrion Road
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4

Otherwise, you end up driving up and down city streets looking for these randomly named buildings. It's all very confusing!

Even in new-build commercial parks, it's not unusual that they haven't bothered numbering anything!

Try and Find Us Ltd,
Sandyford Industrial Estate,
Dublin 18

They might as well just write :
Try and Find Us Ltd,
Ah sure everyone knows where we are!
Dublin 18.

gjim

So we renumber streets in the name of "rationalization"; forcing every company, local and central government body, semi-state, etc. in the country to update their files (electronic and paper), have deeds and contracts redrawn; provide an official name for every country road and boreen and number every isolated house (another bureaucratic and logistical nightmare); install (and maintain!) 10,000s of new signs up and down the country; and then, and only then, should we get around to rolling out a simple system which allows people to be confident of receiving their amazon orders or to reliably summon the emergency services?

Solair

gjim wrote: »

So we renumber streets in the name of "rationalization"; forcing every company, local and central government body, semi-state, etc. in the country to update their files (electronic and paper), have deeds and contracts redrawn; provide an official name for every country road and boreen and number every isolated house (another bureaucratic and logistical nightmare); install (and maintain!) 10,000s of new signs up and down the country; and then, and only then, should we get around to rolling out a simple system which allows people to be confident of receiving their amazon orders or to reliably summon the emergency services?

No, it's not necessary to do it all in one go but there should be an aim e.g. a set of national standards which are gradually implemented.
It's nuts that we have new build industrial estates with no block numbering or housing estates with poor signage.

Just because something was done in a half-assed way for years, does not mean that it should continue to be done in a half-assed way just 'because'.

There are a lot of very simple things that could be done to improve addressing. Numbering unnumbered buildings like apartment blocks and things like requiring mailboxes to be installed on gates of houses would be pretty straight-forward!

Addressing should be logical. The system in Ireland follows very little logic in most cases and it's totally haphazard and confusing and, quite a lot of the time, just totally useless as you can't find things without resorting to knocking on doors.

A GPS-based system is one way of dealing with it, but there should be an aspirational aim to tidy up signage / addressing as time goes on and as the opportunity arises.

thirty-six dragons

Certainly addressing needs to be made logical - but people aren't stopping to remember that that is not the tradition in Ireland. Not everyone lives on a street. Townlands are the traditional addressing in Ireland.

BUT; even if over time people get real with the addressing and remember to put Street, District, City/Town, County - even then, we still need postcodes.

It's not about satisfying satnav companies. Even if you never had a satnav you would benefit from a postcode and benefit from the support and services of people who can translate that code into a location - fast. Like emergency services. Can you realise who terrifying it is to have to give detailed turn by turn instructions in the middle of the night to the firemen while your house is on fire!?! And even then have to go out and flag them down from a field away with a torch! I can. Never want it to happen again. Calling my unnamed road (it has a long "L" designation somewhere that I've only ever seen once on the Council demand for money to resurface it) something random - it is one of a few windy laneways in this townland so you can't use that name - and adding a number to a house along a laneway that forks and bends and no numbering system would be self-evident is still never going to help anyone find this location.

And you can give up talking about Postman Pat and how he wants to be able to sort his little bag of mail according to districts and roads - because your friendly Postman Pat already uses a postcode for your address - your address is part of the big address directory with geolocation coordinates. The only thing is they keep it to themselves. Because for some unknown gob****e reason it would be wrong for a state company to dare to make it easier for ambulances, and firemen, and pizza delivery, and couriers, and doctors, and oil delivery men, and mechanics, and anyone else to find your address. Once An Post is happy delivering your daily Super Valu advert then we're all happy!

Every single day I have to give directions. Couriers who are paid good money to deliver often give up and ask me to come collect from them at the nearest town. Tesco won't deliver unless I select an address from their list that is incorrect.

There's a lot of things need fixing in Ireland but I can't for the life of me see any opposition to the introduction of a free and open postcode.

Of course, should we be on track to get a proprietary postcode then it is no better. An Post will continue to use their own regardless. And nobody else without being in hock to a private company will be able to do anything useful with your postcode either.

http://tinyurl.com/openpostcode