Expand Pelias with optional address, GeoNames, and interpolation sources

[Medformatik]

Problem

The self-hosted Pelias preset imports OpenStreetMap and Who's On First, but leaves several Pelias-supported sources unused. Address coverage and interpolation quality can therefore be much weaker in areas where OSM house numbers are sparse.

Current state

• Pelias, Elasticsearch, Placeholder, and PIP services are defined.
• integrations/geocoding-pelias/ supports forward, reverse, and autocomplete requests.
• packages/cli/src/lib/pelias-data.ts builds OSM and Who's On First inputs.
• Configuration declares interpolation/polyline paths, but the build does not generate/import OpenAddresses, GeoNames, TIGER interpolation, or street polylines.
• Pelias refreshes currently use a full rebuild contract.

Proposed solution

Make additional Pelias sources modular and region-aware: OpenAddresses, GeoNames, generated street polylines, and US TIGER-backed address interpolation where applicable. Preserve a minimal OSM+WOF profile for smaller deployments.

Acceptance criteria

• Each optional source has a service/CLI manifest contract, version/checksum metadata, coverage rules, licensing notes, and capacity estimate.
• Region selection maps deterministically to source downloads and rejects unsupported combinations.
• OpenAddresses and GeoNames can be downloaded, prepared, and imported independently.
• Street polylines and the interpolation database are generated in the correct Pelias dependency order.
• TIGER interpolation is US-only and never silently enabled outside supported coverage.
• Builds are resumable, observable, atomic from the query service's perspective, and recoverable after failure.
• Operators can choose minimal, address-enhanced, and full profiles with documented CPU/RAM/disk expectations.
• A multilingual regional evaluation compares baseline and enhanced address/name recall, precision, autocomplete, and reverse geocoding.
• Duplicate/conflicting records keep source provenance and follow a documented Pelias ranking policy.
• Integration, smoke, and upgrade tests cover each profile.
• Documentation states that incremental Pelias refresh is not included unless separately designed.

Alternatives considered

OSM-only keeps operations small but leaves known address gaps. Enabling every importer unconditionally makes regional deployments too expensive and complicates licensing.

Area

Geocoding, CLI data preparation, self-hosted services.

References

• docs/docs/guides/geocoders.md
• https://github.com/pelias/pelias
• https://github.com/pelias/docker
• https://github.com/pelias/interpolation