Release Notes - FSQ OS Places

April 2025

Since previous release on 03/06

We tested a new workflow to make targeted improvements to our Places dataset with an experiment on a sample of 10k places in the Montreal region resulting in 1.5k new places added and 5.8k places updated, setting us up for more aggressive updates to our dataset in the forthcoming releases.
We standardized the region attribute of 82,601 POI in Canada to the two-letter province abbreviation.
We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 1,346 POI globally that did not match the intersecting country.

Since previous release on 02/06

We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 257,500 POI that had previous latitude, longitude values of NULL.
We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 25,754 POI in the US where the region values did not match their previous latitude and longitude placement.
We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 2,777 POI in Canada where the region values did not match their previous latitude and longitude placement.
We corrected the country code for 5,921 POI globally that had previously been marked NULL.

Since previous release on 01/10

A new format PMTiles is available on S3:
- The latest version of OS Places will be available as vector tiles in PMTile format for efficient use in smart mapping and visualization applications.
- S3 location: s3://fsq-os-places-us-east-1/release/vector-tiles/latest/
- Please preview the tiles using kepler.gl 3.1 map viewer
  - Click on 'Tileset' Tab in the Add Data To Map dialog.
  - Add the PMTiles URL to the 'Tileset URL' text box: https://fsq-os-places-us-east-1.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/release/vector-tiles/latest/fsq-os-places.pmtiles
  - Click on 'Add Tileset' to start exploring!
The geoparquet release in S3 implements a more efficient sort based on geocoordinate partitioning. The result is more efficient spatial queries.
We corrected the geocoordinate locations of 44,756 POI located in oceans by geocoding POI with full address, country codes and non-marine related categories.
We removed 15,657 POI in the US with profanity in the name attribute. We used a two-pass approach: first identified problematic POIs through string matching against a profanity lexicon and NLI-based probability scoring, then evaluated flagged POIs for legitimacy by analyzing historical foot traffic patterns, address validity, and contact information completeness, with entries failing multiple criteria marked for removal.
We removed 2,911 POI with null country code, completely null address parts and an absence of historical foot traffic.

Since previous release on 12/04

A new column placemaker_url has been added.
- This attribute contains a link to the POI’s review page in the PlaceMaker Tools application.
- Users can suggest edits to correct data quality issues or review pending edits.
- Example: https://foursquare.com/placemakers/review-place/5a187743ccad6b307315e6fe
- See documentation for more information.
We filled 1,768,290 POI postcode values using contextual address mapping.
We removed 27,584 POI that were located in oceans by isolating POI with missing address and a lack of first party data signals.
We corrected 238 POI that were located in oceans with inverted latitude and longitude values.
We corrected 33,321 POI in the US where region values did not match their latitude and longitude placement.
The date_refreshed attribute indicates when we last received trustworthy confirmation about a place's details, either through trusted data sources or human interaction such as user edits and rich content submissions.
- We've improved how we track this timestamp by updating it only when we receive external validation - whether from trusted sources, Swarm users contributing content, or Placemaker edits.
- We no longer update this timestamp for automated system changes, such as standardization updates or internal algorithm adjustments. As a result of this one-time adjustment, many places show older date_refreshed values compared to the previous release.

Since previous release on 11/19

New file formats available in the public S3 bucket
- Geoparquet format with Zstandard compression is now available with supported geometry columns
  s3://fsq-os-places-us-east-1/release/dt=2024-12-03/places/parquet
An offering is now available on HuggingFace
An offering is now available on Snowflake