Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

A lot of these comes down to structuring law and bureaucracy to be digitizable. In Denmark every cadastre is throughly mapped and logged, and have been for a long long time. As a result we have a national addressregistry with a public API. This way your digital solutions will never really get an address wrong.

I think you could build something similar with OpenStreetMaps if your bureaucracy sucks, but it’s a massive undertaking of course.

What surprises me the most is how countries that don’t do this, keeps track of all the other GIS related things. Like how much electricity or plumbing a cadastre will need. Or perhaps more important, taxes and property taxes.



When I moved in to a new apartment in Copenhagen, it took about a year for the address to be present on most websites that tried to autocomplete it.

Almost all of them let me input it myself if the autocomplete failed. I did have to phone Yousee so they could provide broadband.


Well, the open API isn’t free as in beer.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: