Missing buildings and addresses.

Hi.
I’m living in Belgium since a year and I’m surprised that there are a lot of cities with no buildings shapes and even no addresses?
Is there no sources to import from? Comparing two neighborhoods: Knokke and Sluis, Belgium seems to be poor quality compared to Nederlands.
I live in Blankenberge and I would like to make it better. I would like to create missing buildings and numbers.
What solutions are available here?

The Dutch already imported their BAG with all the buildings and addresses, unlike many other European countries where the addresses and buildings are collected by hand.

The same happened in Brussels from the Urbis database.
For Flanders, we have the approval from the import mailing list to go ahead with the “import” process of the GRB data. This will not be a quick and dirty job of just copying the buildings, but will still require some manual work, so the quality is what you expect from OSM. The developer just needs to clean up the tool a bit before the process will be explained to a larger audience.

In the meantime you could already colllect data about the exact building types. The GRB database does not have e.g. the difference between houses and apartments. This is something we will try to add, so we improve the data.

If you want to participate in the process, I suggest you become part of the Riot/Matrix chat group where this “import” is discussed quite often.

I assisted a lot in the Nteherland BAG import and update; how could I join (nearby) Belgium import process?

How to find the Riot/Matrix group?

https://riot.im/app/#/room/#osmbe:matrix.org :wink:

It’s linked here, but all communication channels are linked in the sticky in this subforum aswell.

I found it; must admit I do not like that so much (not so structured), compared to this forum. The NL forum is quite active; what is the reason for you to use Riot/Matrix?

Ik heb het gevonden en ik moet zeggen dat ik dit forum meer waardeer. Ik zie nu ook dat het NL forum veel actiever is dan het B forum. Wat is de reden waarom jullie Riot/Matrix naast dit forum gebruiken? Een beetje vleesch noch visch? :slight_smile:

Quick guess:

  • Smaller userbase, so inherently a lower volume
  • Languages. There’s already less of us then there’s dutch folks, and we are spread across 3 languages. Somewhat ironically we cover that by all resorting to a fourth language. Creates a bit less of a ‘nation identity’ as far as association with OSM goes. Doesn’t mean we’re less passionate.
  • Historical growth. Once used to work with a ‘social network’ of the sorts, with messaging, pinging, etc… you tend to rely on fairly quick feedback on those you’re in close contact with. If we’re going for something, we are mostly a fairly impatient bunch.

I’ll agree a properly structured phpbb forum can give bigger visibility to the matters discussed, but then again, most in-depth questions that arise here are discussed in the Riot channel and feedback given here. Given the fact OSM Belgium is now an official chapter, alot of planning / organising / structuring is being thought about, we’ll see where it all ends.

Oorspronkelijk werden de meeste discussies in Blegië op de mailing list gehouden. Vermoedelijk omdat de actieven toen voorkeur gaven aan mailing lists boven fora. De jongere generatie heeft dan iets van chat gebruikt bij het organiseren van SOTM. Maar dat was geen open software/platform, dus dan is men overgestapt naar Riot/Matrix. Ze hebben dan de rest van de actieven mee getrokken.