topic Re: Published Multirole Locator results in Addressing Questions

Published Multirole Locator results

JoeBorgione — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 23:00:33 GMT

ArcGIS Pro 2.4.2

I have a multi role locator with point address, street address-alt name and poi-altname roles. The locator it self works great but I'm getting inconsistent returns when I add it as a published service. When I use the multi role locator in the locate pane, I get one hit:

It's matched on the point address role, and that's just what I'm hoping to see.

When I add the published locator, sometimes \it gives two returns one on the Street Address, and a second on the Point address. To me, this is odd, especially when the 'B' result is the address point:

Here I am back at my house, and I'm getting a single return, on the point address:

The inconsistency has me scratching my head. Any ideas where things are getting goofy on me?

And if that's not weird enough, I have a list of 2500 addresses, and when I geocode against the locator, I get a 96% match rate. When I match against the published service I match 0 (zero)....

Shana Britt‌

Eric Anderson‌

Brad Niemand‌

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

BradNiemand — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 00:39:40 GMT

Joe,

Without more information I am just going to guess that the center of the map is in a different location. We use the center of the map to prefer locations that are closer to center of the map over locations that are further away. I suspect that when you get the StreetAddress match above the PointAddress match, you have the center of the map closer to the StreetAddress location.

As for why only the PointAddress match only shows one candidate without the StreetAddress match is because we do some logic under the covers to try to eliminate duplicate results when a PointAddress match is returned with a good score.

If you have an ID that links the PointAddress and the StreetAddress, you can map the "Street Address Join ID" for both roles and it will eliminate the duplication of StreetAddress candidates. The code tries to be smart about it but without this linkage, it isn't guaranteed.

Brad

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

JoeBorgione — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 16:15:46 GMT

Let's see if some illustrations add to the discussion:

# 1: relative locations of point address and street address for my house:

Relative location of my house to the extent of the data:

So, since the street location is seemingly closer to the center of the map, it gets the preferred location (A)?

When I use the published multirole service I get the dual matches. But when I use the locator itself, it just gives me the point address return. So the center of the map logic applies to the published service and not the locator, while the under the covers logic applies to the locator and not the published service?

I'm missing something...

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

BradNiemand — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 17:43:00 GMT

Joe,

What version of Server are you using? The center of the map is always passed in if you are zoomed in to 1:500,000 or closer (~30 mile radius). This would apply to both local and published locators.

It is possible that 2.4.2 has additional logic that further reduces duplicates when PointAddress matches are found that isn't in the version of Server that you have installed. We are constantly improving the geocoding results so it is very possible that if you are using a older version of Server, it doesn't contain this logic. I don't recall any specific work we did related to this but like I said, we are constantly improving the matching logic.

Brad

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

JoeBorgione — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 17:52:07 GMT

10.6.1

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

BradNiemand — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 20:53:48 GMT

Joe,

Do you have the patch installed?

ArcGIS Server 10.6.1 General Geocoding Patch

There is nothing specific to the behavior you mentioned above in this patch but it would be good to install anyway.

Brad

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

JoeBorgione — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 21:08:27 GMT

Yes- we have the geocoding specific patches installed. I've actually got tech service case opened to see if we can figure out why the published multirole does not return anything but the actual locator does. In our (myself & ESRI analyst) we noticed that the publishedmulti role service does not resolve an address interactively through the Locate pane. However I have also published the single roles: point address, street address and poi. I'm going to create a multirole with address points and poi, and then again with poi and street address and see if we get somewhere.

I'll post up my results here for you to see.

Thanks!

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

BradNiemand — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 21:48:56 GMT

Joe,

Does your locator have any zones (city, state, postal) built into it and if you do, are you trying to search with no zones? If not I think this might be what you are running into with 10.6.1. 10.6.1 was released prior to the Create Locator tool so the only locators that could be used with it at the time were the World locator and locators from StreetMap Premium. The functionality to support locators with no zones was not added until after 10.6.1.

The only way around this is to ensure that you are zoomed in past 1:500,000 so that location is passed in.

Brad

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

JoeBorgione — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 22:32:34 GMT

None of my locators have a zone assigned to them, by design.

I just now created 3 ‘two-role’ locators:

AddressPoints_PointOfInterest

Streets_PointOfInterest

AddressPoints_Streets

I published each of them as services on our stand-alone server. When I batch geocode with the 2500 records I've been using all three return 0 results.

This is where things get really weird:

Initially I interacted with each of them through the Locate pane, they all returned correct locations. Now I am retracing my steps and while all of them provide suggestions, none of them return results. This inconsistency will keep my therapist's children in private school.

Now I just opened a brand new, unsaved ArcGIS Pro project and added the three new services:

AddressPoints_POI service returns results interactively for my address and parcel id

Streets_POI service returns my address along the street as expected and parcel id

AddressPoints_Streets service returns my address point location as well as my street address location

I guess the hole mess is something to put on hold until we get our 10.7.1 Enterprise up and running...

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

JoeBorgione — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 23:53:25 GMT

I was going to post a good news bad news thread, but now I really can't. It's just news, and old news at that:

I created a two role locator with point address & street address roles and BOTH have city zone fields mapped. I then published it.

Adding the published service to my pro session, I was able to resolve my address; I got both the point address and the street address,and they are labled A and B respectively. Don't go dancing in the streets just yet we'll come back to this.

The I tried to batch geocode my 2500 addresses: I actually got about 2 dozen to 'match' and when I checked them they really weren't matched to what they should have been. Like nowhere near. Here's an example of a 'match':

The actual location of 8785 W Magna Main St is about midway along the selected line on the south side; what it shows as a match is along a segment of street that has an alternate name of S 8785 W

I can go on with others, but you get the idea. Basically none of the 'matches' are correct.

Let's go back to the interactive locate pane. Before I made the attempt at batch geocoding, I used the Locate pane to locate my address. I got the double match, on the point and street, but at least the address point was listed as 'A':

Then after the batch attempt, I entered my address interactively again. This time the A and B were flipped:

I tried on more time and made my selection based on the suggestions. There are two, on with the city spelled Holladay (address points) the other with the city spelled HOLLADAY (streets). I've added my address several times interactively and can get the results to switch the A & B almost every time when I don't choose a suggestion.

At this stage of the game, I've concluded that multirole locators work okay, but once you publish them, all bets are off. For our published locator services, I'm afraid we'll be sticking with good ol' composites.

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

BradNiemand — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:21:33 GMT

Joe,

Likely the limitations you are seeing are because of the older version of the software. Please let me know once you have tried it against 10.7.1.

Brad

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

JoeBorgione — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:24:12 GMT

Probably after the new year. Thanks for your help Brad!

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

MichaelVolz — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:58:57 GMT

Is the Create Locator tool in Pro for multi-roles designed to just return 1 result which is the closest to the center of the map? What if you have 3 identical addresses in a large jurisdiction where you would want the address locator to return all results for as you would zoom to each result individually?

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

BradNiemand — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 18:06:12 GMT

Michael,

If the addresses have the same attributes and are from the same role then all of them will be returned. The first one will just be the closest to the center of the map. Even if the addresses have the same attributes but are from differnt roles and are not spatially near each other, all the candidates will be returned.

The logic for deduplication of identical candidates happens when you have identical attributes across different roles where the locations are very close to each other. Essentially we want to remove the StreetAddress match if we have a PointAddress match that represents the same address but with a more spatially precise location.

Brad

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

JoeBorgione — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 20:48:45 GMT

Brad- is the 'center of the map' logic an ArcGIS Pro feature? I ask because of this scenario:

Using the 'old style' create address locators, I have two address point locators: one is based on the General - Single Field style, and the other is based on US Address - Single House Subaddress style. Both of these are members of a composite address locator.

I just geocoded a list of addresses using the published composite service and as I'm reviewing the results, I notice an address that shows as a tied. There are 6 points with the exact same address of 1860 E 9400 S (don' t ask me...) In my screen cap below, you can see the 6 selected address points and the one highlighted is the one the geocoder picked as the match. That looks to me to be the closest to the center of the map, at least the closest to the center of extent of my data which is where I was when I geocoded the addresses. Is this an example of what you mean by center of the map logic?

Brad Niemand‌

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

BradNiemand — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 20:52:27 GMT

Joe,

The center of the map is only used when performing interactive geocoding, not batch geocoding. What you are seeing is just a coincidence because when batch geocoding it will just choose the first candidate if there is a tie.

Brad

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

JoeBorgione — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 21:03:23 GMT

Interesting. How is first candidate determined? I would have thought the lowest value Object ID would be used...(My definition of 'first')

Re: Published Multirole Locator results

BradNiemand — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 21:06:01 GMT

Joe,

There is not a really good answer for this. It depends on a lot of factors but the best way to think of it is that it is random.

Brad