topic Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units in Data Management Questions

Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

Greene_Chris — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:34:46 GMT

Hi all -

It's been a tedious slog with address locators in 10 so far. Now that the zip code/city/state issues has been resolved with sp1, we are now trying to tackle the addresses with units.

It seems that the USAddress - Single House locator best fits our needs. I have been setting the Additional Field to our unit field yet when looking at the geocoding results it's obvious that the locator is not seeing this additional field value as an apartment unit. For example, when using the find tool to locate 115 Brown St A, nothing found. However, a search for 115 Brown St will return two options, neither one containing the additional unit information. Has anyone else come across this and found a work around?

As a side note, to get around the zip code issue, I did load in the 931 locators which worked great until I needed to assign privileges to other user groups.

Thanks in advance-

Chris

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BradNiemand — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:58:27 GMT

I have attached a style that will work with Apartment Units. Let me know if you have any issues.

Brad

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

Greene_Chris — Thu, 19 May 2011 21:27:52 GMT

Hi Brad -

It took awhile to get back around to geocoding again. Thanks for posting that locator. It seems to be doing the trick. However, have you noticed that it adds a '#' to every match_addr? I guess it's not important, but I just wanted to make sure that what I'm seeing isn't out of the ordinary.

Thanks -

Chris

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BradNiemand — Thu, 19 May 2011 21:31:10 GMT

Prior to SP2, we didn't have an easy way to only output formatting if there was a value associated with that component (ie. Apartment number). Therefore, thee # symbol always gets written out for the Match_addr even if there is no apartment number. If you have SP2 installed, I can fix it if needed.

Brad

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

Greene_Chris — Thu, 19 May 2011 21:34:21 GMT

Thanks for the offer but that's alright. The match_addr field isn't used for anything at the moment but I figured it didn't hurt to ask about the symbol.

Cheers - Chris

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

DaleSimper — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:17:36 GMT

Brad, it would be nice if you could fix this locator so the # symbol doesn't always get written out. Thanks.

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BradNiemand — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:22:42 GMT

This style will only work with SP2 installed.

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

DaleSimper — Tue, 24 May 2011 21:55:30 GMT

Thanks Brad for the quick response, but I've created a locator using the style you provided and when I reverse geocode using the Address Inspector the # symbol is still being written out after an address that doesn't have a unit number (ie. 111 N 100 E #). Also if I search for any address in the Find Location Tool or on the Geocoding toolbar using the locator created from the style, Arcmap crashes. I do have Service Pack 2 installed.

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BradNiemand — Tue, 24 May 2011 22:31:33 GMT

Sorry about that. This one is better.

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

DaleSimper — Wed, 25 May 2011 13:42:51 GMT

Thanks again Brad, that one works better, but the # symbol is still being written out on addresses that don't have unit numbers when I reverse geocode using the address inspector tool.

Nevermind I got it to work by putting # in the pre_separator for the UnitNumber and taking out the preserve # under the reverse geocoding section. Thanks though.

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

NedCake — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:24:38 GMT

Hi Brad,
I am attempting to use the style you posted on 5/24/11 to publish a geocoding service in ArcGIS Server. My locator uses a point address feature class and a place name alias table. The locator works fine until I publish it. Unfortunately, in the published version all references to the alias table are removed. The locator service works but will no locate place names.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Ned

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BradNiemand — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:23:10 GMT

This is a known issue with 10.0 locators.

Brad

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BrianOevermann — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:41:29 GMT

Brad,
I used the White Paper to create my own locator .lot file for units as well as my address fractional field. I have some questions that I hope you can answer.

Overall, when I use a locator built on this .lot, it returns all of the valid addresses (i.e. ALL of the unit points within the apartment complex). This also happens with the successful matches with addresses having a fractional (i.e. 80A N Main St). How do I "force" the locator to push the record with the actual unit or fractional match I am searching for to the very top?

Also, regarding the fractional field, I have been unable to match a "half" address (i.e. 440 1/2 N Main St). If I simply locate 440 N Main St, the system returns the "half" record. I think I am missing something really basic in the formatting but I'm stumped.

I compared my .lot with the version you posted and mine gets around the persistent "#" sign by using our UnitType (unit, ste, #) field along with the UnitNumber field. But I realize not everyone maintains their data in this way.

I am running SP1 at the moment, and I've attached my .lot.

Thanks for any insight,
Brian

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BradNiemand — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:53:57 GMT

I am not too sure where you are going wrong here but I am attaching the latest style. Maybe some of the issues you are having have been addressed in this style.

Brad

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BrianOevermann — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:42:47 GMT

Brad,

Thank you for the latest style sample. It definitely filled in the gaps that the customization white paper fails to cover. My functional style file is attached. It honors fractional address fields as well as separate unit type and unit number fields. I hope folks find it useful if their data is structured in a similar way! Share it far and wide and please, ESRI, polish it and include it as a default in 10.1! I never want to have the need to do this customization again!

You need to place this style file in the locator directory of your ArcGIS install. The default location is:
C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Desktop10.0\Locators

Our site address data layer uses the following fields:
Address
Address Fractional (i.e. the "A" or "1/2" in "80 A Main St" or "80 1/2 Main St")
Prefix Direction
Street Name
Street Type
Suffix Direction
Unit Type (i.e. Unit, Ste, #)
Unit Number
City
ZIP Code
State

The style has not been tested in any other configurations.

EDIT: We are currently on SP1--no testing with SP2 has been done!

Enjoy,
Brian

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

ChristopherGraff — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:53:16 GMT

Everyone's advice has been extremely helpful, but I'm stuck on one point:

If I geocode an address that has a root location as well as sub/unit locations the geocoder always returns all matches. For all apartment completexes we have a root address (123 Main St) as well as unit addresses for each apartment (123 Main St #1, #2, etc). If a user geocodes "123 Main St" the root address should have a higher score than "123 Main St #1". How can I accomplish this? Or is it just not possible?

thanks in advance,
-chris

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BradNiemand — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:17:17 GMT

I have tweeked the style a bit more and I believe that I should post the updates.

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

ChristopherGraff — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:44:15 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply Brad,

Unfortunately it hasn't helped my issue. I need a way to score an exact match higher than over-matches (addresses with units). See screen shot attached. I need to get the selected result (which exactly matches the searched string) to score higher than any unit address with the same root address.

-chris

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

BradNiemand — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:46:07 GMT

Thanks for the quick reply Brad,

Unfortunately it hasn't helped my issue. I need a way to score an exact match higher than over-matches (addresses with units). See screen shot attached. I need to get the selected result (which exactly matches the searched string) to score higher than any unit address with the same root address.

-chris

Chris,

Did you rebuild with this style?

Brad

Re: Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

ChristopherGraff — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:54:04 GMT

Chris,

Did you rebuild with this style?

Brad

I created a new locator from the style just to double check. It still returns the same problematic results.

If it makes any difference the locator is created in an SDE 10sp2 db and I'm using Desktop 10sp2.

-chris