Tell me more ×
Geographic Information Systems Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for cartographers, geographers and GIS professionals. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 2 down vote favorite
1

I'm currently developing an application that uses shp files for Dublin. In particular I want to display the postal areas for Dublin but cannot locate an appropriate shp file.

Can anyone advise where to locate the shp file for Dublin postal areas?

Kind regards,

Anthony

share|improve this question
Welcome to GIS SE, can you be more specific in the location of Dublin (what country)? – artwork21 Sep 10 '12 at 11:44
1  
Dublin is the capital and most populous city of Ireland. Also it has great pubs. – nickves Sep 10 '12 at 11:54
Have you talked to the City of Dublin. Surely, they have some GIS data sources they can point you too – dassouki Sep 10 '12 at 12:36
1  
There is an old system for Dublin but in the process to be changed into a National Postcode en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ireland_postal_addresses there are still issues – Mapperz♦ Sep 10 '12 at 13:27
2  
Good pubs but terrible GIS data. OSi have a stranglehold on what should be public info. – djq Sep 10 '12 at 20:24

4 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

The Dublin Postcode areas are mapped on OSM so maybe you could download them from there? Try Geofabrik or even the QGIS plugin to do this.

I suspect they might be in line format, so they might need some work.

I plan on getting these myself in the near future so will keep you posted if I do!

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Anthony,

I'm not aware of a freely available shp file of the Dublin postal districts. You should contact the Geodirectory as I'm certain they have such a dataset. Alternatively, you could probably generate it using the OSi ED boundaries in conjunction with ED - Postal district information from An Post.

As a last resort, you could digitise an existing map, but you should first ensure that you would not be breaking any OSi copyrights.

share|improve this answer
2  
GeoDirectory data will probably not be free as they are allowed to resell information that should be public, unfortunately. – djq Sep 10 '12 at 19:21
up vote 0 down vote

Maybe thats what you're looking for :

http://www.nisra.gov.uk/geography/default.asp6.htm

from their site: "The Central Postcode Directory (CPD) has been compiled for users by NISRA Geography and contains both current and terminated postcodes in Northern Ireland. It is however freely available only to all Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement (NIMA) participants or those working on behalf of NIMA participants."

The data are pw protected, but they're free. To receive the password you must agree at something the ireland's statistical wants.

share|improve this answer
Thanks for that, I'm actually looking specifically for postal data for Dublin in Republic of Ireland, can't find any shp files online, there are a couple from the www.cso.ie but mainly voting areas and city locations. – ajfarrell Sep 10 '12 at 13:00
up vote 0 down vote

I don't fully know how your app is working but if you can use a service, rather than a shapefile it is possible to get lat/long from addresses using a geocoding service. I was using Google's service for Ireland and it worked well at the street level (I did not need to go to the building level). Google also provide a reverse geocoding service which takes a lat/long and gives you an address.

There are a few other services available for geocoding in Ireland. OpenPostCode have done some work on this with a discussion here and a link to a tool here. There is also GOCode and Loc8Code.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.