Reverse Geocoding and Stacked Points

Question

NOTE: this is related to building locators with Create Locator in ArcGIS Pro 3.0.

If you have stacked address points and utilize Reverse Geocoding, you will only get one record from that stack returned. It appears that the Reverse Geocoding operation finds nearby data held in the locator, runs through it's hierarchy logic (i.e. Point Address, Street Address, POI, etc.), and provides back the first object that is closest and should be returned based on the hierarchy logic. When a locator is built with stacked points, does anyone know how the locator organizes those stacked points?

I'd like to be able to control what geocoding object in the stack of points is returned, but I don't know what Create Locator may be utilizing to organize the stacked points in the .loz file. I figured it would be based on ObjectID, but that didn't seem to be the case. Some testing indicated that address number could factor in?

Shana Britt · Answer

@ScottFedak2085

If the subaddresses are stacked (same geometry) we will return a range of subaddresses at that location.  If they aren’t stacked (different geometry) we will return the closest one to the input location.

-Shana

ScottFedak2085 · Answer

@ShanaBritt Thanks for responding! The stacked points are predominately subaddresses, but I usually turn off reverse geocoding for subaddresses. This would be related to stacked points on large parcels, corner lots, duplex type properties with address number suffixes, and addresses that are vacant or deactivated but could still be utilized to reference a property. With all of these scenarios we want to be able to still locate these addresses via forward geocoding, but would prefer to have Reverse Geocoding reference the predominant address for that property.

It seemed to me that one way to do this would be to account for how Create Locator iterates over the source data and stores it in the .loz file. We could also do some spatial manipulation to the points, but that would be a harder workflow to implement and would still be heavily dependent on where a user clicks on a map. The other option that we'll probably have to go with is to build in a parcel role with a feature class containing the desired address data for a reverse geocode, support parcel data for reverse geocoding, and disable Point Address data for reverse geocoding.

Shana Britt · Answer

@ScottFedak2085 Are your stacked points subaddresses at a single location?