topic Re: Repository of US Addresses ? in Data Management Questions

Repository of US Addresses ?

HyltonHaynes — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 17:49:06 GMT

Is there a repository of addresses in the entire United States available for download, I have been looking for this from couple of week but have no luck in getting any links. Any leads/help is appreciated.

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

RobertScheitlin__GISP — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 18:32:30 GMT

Hylton,

No such repository exists to my knowledge. The logistic, updating, and cost of such a repository would be insane.

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:00:59 GMT

to add to Robert's comments... the sheer invasion of privacy by acknowledging that a real address actually exists...and misuse by marketer... aka ... Occupant, 123 Maple Drive, Your City ... would be pretty awful

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

ChrisDonohue__GISP — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:03:18 GMT

As Robert Scheitlin, GISP mentioned, there is unlikely to be a full database available. This is due in part to many municipalities being involved in the addressing process, so thousands and thousands of entities.

For example, I am part of the team that creates new addresses for the City of Roseville, California. The County we are in does the addressing for locations in the County outside Roseville. So for the United States you can see how complex it can get as one considers each City and County has a hand in the process. (And each has its own addressing standards, which vary considerably, but that is another can of worms).

Plus it is dynamic. New addresses are being added and existing ones updated/corrected on a regular basis.

What would you be using the addresses for? Are you trying to find existing locations, like by Geocoding? Depending on what your goal is, there may be a way to do it without having to create a database of all the addresses.

Addressing

Chris Donohue, GISP

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

HyltonHaynes — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:11:01 GMT

Sure I understand the complexity. I was trying to preprocess millions of addresses, they have a lot of inconsistencies (missing, misspell etc.) because of free form text entry from users. This would then be used for geocoding using ESRI or other tools.

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

ChrisDonohue__GISP — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:11:10 GMT

Dan,

Sounds like Canada might be more constrained than the U.S in the use of addresses by marketers. Here in the States businesses and organizations have fairly free reign to create address lists from whatever sources they can lay their hands on and then send people mail. You should see all the unsolicited stuff in my mailbox! Marketers love address databases. Even the US Post Office will sell address lists for various geographies. And, like in email, it can be difficult for a person to "opt out" of all the advertising ("paper spam") one gets.

Chris Donohue, GISP

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

JoshuaBixby — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:12:21 GMT

US Residential Mailing Addresses Databases

You might also want to read up on the US DOT Nationwide Address Database effort.

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

ChrisDonohue__GISP — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:27:04 GMT

There are several possibilities to help resolve those. First, can you define what the things are that need to be "standardized"? If so, there are ways to use code to help "clean up" the address entities into more standard formats. There are several folks on here who have in the past provided Python script that has greatly aided in address data cleanup. For example, to clean up street suffixes, Darren Wiens provided some nice Python advice on how to do this.

Python - using Replace in Field Calculator

Also, there are several folks on GeoNet who regularly have to clean up address data, so may have some ideas to share. jborgion

Chris Donohue, GISP

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

JoeBorgione — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:32:14 GMT

Assuming that Joshua's links can help you out, I'm curious as to what you expect to get in this preprocess phase as opposed to going straight to geocoding. You've got nationwide addresses, which means you have nation wide errors.

I get it that free text entries results in awful addressing; I worked at a PSAP and was tasked with geocoding about a million records with no standard of entry in any way shape or form. There was a city that only had three letters, and it was spelled several different ways! Another city had 48 different spellings! And this was just one county worth of addresses...

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:34:46 GMT

Thankfully we are... persistent unsolicited junk mail from a company is generally the kiss of death for their foolish business plan

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

HyltonHaynes — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:35:41 GMT

Thanks Chris for those ideas. I did find the repository for Street Suffixes, Prefixes and StreetType from USPS and other sources and corrected those. Street names/numbers is the only one that is giving me a roadblock.

Waiting to hear what ideas the other experts have.

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

HyltonHaynes — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 17:10:06 GMT

yeah this is the exact problem I'm running into, there can be 'n' permutation combination ways of writing one string. I'm assuming it would be good to do something like fuzzy matching with a repository to correct he addresses and then pass them through geocoding to improve on matches rather than directly geocoding and then choosing right matches.

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

JoeBorgione — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 19:11:22 GMT

Best of luck to you. Keep us posted; you've got quite a challenge ahead!

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

ErikSaganic — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 16:58:10 GMT

Not everything, but a really lot of addresses:

OpenAddresses — Download Data

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

GrantHerbert — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 17:34:52 GMT

I can't see how acknowledging the existence of an address would constitute an invasion of privacy. Allowed uses of addresses is a different matter.

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

DanPatterson_Retired — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 18:31:39 GMT

As Canadians... it is a widely held viewpoint... not ubiquitous. No one excep the 'tax' and '911' people need to know where I live. It isn't something we banter around... like when they ask for your postal code (zip code) at the major chain stores... I give one for the major cemetery just to mess with them. If forced to give a street address, similar deal... works wonders with relatives as well.

And on that note, with the help of GeoNet and their former mapping program... I have even gone to great lengths to mask my place of employment

https://community.esri.com/message/533072

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

PeterGoodman1 — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 19:30:32 GMT

If I missed a similar answer forgive me.

1: most addressing is done on the local level. Most of that data is derived from developers for the road names and then the addressing is up to the addressing side (typically in the Plan. Zone Depts.) .

That information is then pushed upward ON REQUEST to third party vendors. Some areas have restrictions, others don't on pushing that data. But given that it is public record in the US the data can usually be had, but the errors spoken of are part of the beast in general.

2: This concept has been banted around for the better part of 50+ years with no real solution, mostly because most places do not have a mandate nor the general ability to do so.

3: As to the privacy issue.

In the US, the information is considered public information and is open to anyone.

Re: Repository of US Addresses ?

RickGeittmann — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 14:13:52 GMT

Within the realm of the NG 911 systems the short answer is Yes, but due to other issues making that data freely available will not happen in my opinion due to legal issues - and I am sure there are other issues and legal constraints for release / disclosure of that information.