Zenbu

Zenbu.co.nz is a local search website, containing data for companies and POIS in New Zealand (and internationally on Zenbu.org); the data on the site is user-generated and released under a license compatible with OSM (Creative Commons by Attribution) [1]. They currently (2012-10) have over 100,000 POIs in NZ.

This page is dedicated to facilitating the sharing of data between Zenbu and OSM (a two-way process).

Data Attribution

a method for attributing the data back to Zenbu, needs to be developed:
The license the zenbu data is released under states that "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)." Some method must therefore be arrived at, for attributing the data, which the operators of the Zenbu website are happy with. Possible methods include:

• osmarender will print the name of the person who last edited a given way/node, next to it at high zoom levels. this could display 'zenbu.co.nz' for all data originating from the site
  • editing the node in any way will remove the attribution and replace it with the name of the editor, which is not acceptable
• adding a new category to nodes, named 'attribution' and forcing the contents of this tag to display alongside the icon. this tag would be locked after creation, only editable by an administrator, or other named person
• when ever a zenbu originating icon is on screen, attribution could be displayed at bottom-right, in a similar way that the various mapping companies (Navteq, etc.) display on google maps, for the different areas of the earth

zenbu tags --> OSM tags

The POIs in Zenbu use a Zenbu Category classification derived and extended from Schema.org. There is a table on the Zenbu wiki mapping Zenbu Categories to OSM tags.

• Many POIs do not have categories assigned. The Zenbu Categories are not exhaustive and only cover the most commonly searched features. Those without categories are probably of low importance for import into OSM.

additional tags

we may need to add additional tags, to be able to keep track of the data/clear up mistakes later
these may include:

• zenbu_id - the unique identifier used by zenbu, to enable us to keep track of data points which change, and remove the possibility of duplicates
• zenbu_verified - a tag initially set to 'no', later changed to 'yes' when it has been manually checked as correct
• batch index - each batch of imports will have a unique identifier, in case a whole batch job goes wrong they can all be deleted/updated in one go

geocoding

The Zenbu data incorporates latitude and longitude values for each POI. These coordinates were arrived at by one of three methods:

• from GPS tracklogs of Zenbu users
• the address is added to Zenbu and the coordinates derived by geocoding against the LINZ database (which we are free to use in OSM).
• the address is added to Zenbu and the coordinates derived by geocoding against Google Maps (identifiable by a gis_precision field that starts with a capital letter e.g. Street or Address)

The third of these options gives data which is derived from a non-free source i.e. it is incompatible with OSM's license. This represents a significant proportion of the data, which thus has to be re-encoded, either manually or using the LINZ database.

software for importing

Zenbu data is released as kml, gpx and csv, and is also available as SHP files on Koordinates
The data could therefore conceivably be imported with JOSM. If JOSM is not suitable, a custom script may need to be developed, along similar lines to the ones used for AND and TIGER. The tools developed for the LINZ import process could also be very useful.

the import process

Learning from TIGER, and the aborted 2005 import, it would be sensible to break the data into sections/categories and import gradually, looking for errors that may crop up as we go.