topic Re: Canadian geocoding headache in Data Management Questions

Canadian geocoding headache

DavidWeisz — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 16:32:20 GMT

Hey everyone,

As per the subject, I have a geocoding headache (is there a worse kind?). I've successfully created address locators and geocoded addresses before, but I'm running into a wall right now.

Here's what I'm working with: A .csv table I received through a freedom of information request that contains the following fields: address (ex. "1 SCRAPER ST W), municipality, postal code, and province. All of the addresses are within the province of Ontario, and there are over 120,000 of them.

I've been trying to create an address locator using the Ontario Road Network Segment with Address, which contains the following:

The ORN is a national, provincial and municipal initiative that supports the creation, maintenance and sharing of a standard road database. With a positional accuracy of 10 meters or better the ORN is the authoritative source of roads data for Ontario.

This dataset is derived from the ORN Road Net Element data class. It combines 3 types of geometry:

road elements

ferry connections

virtual roads

Address ranges span intersection to intersection or may be interpolated across intersections. Dataset contains 5 attributes:

street name

address information

route identification

road classification

direction of traffic flow

However, once I successfully create the address locator and proceed to geocode, I get zero matches. Am I using the wrong reference data?

Help!

Thanks,

David

Re: Canadian geocoding headache

JoeBorgione — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 17:51:05 GMT

I just downloaded the data myself to take a look at it. Seems to me that the address range data is contained in the L_FIRST, L_LAST and R_FIRST, R_LAST attribute field. They look backwards to me; here in the U.S, ranges are typically shown as From/To, and the From address is less than the To address.

What type of locator did you build on this data? What version of ArcGIS are you using? I looked for Scraper in the data and couldn't find it.

Edited minutes later: looks like some of the address ranges are backwards and others are not. I created locators in both version 10.0 and 10.3.1 (us streets and us address dual range respectively) and neither of them returned a match when interactively entering addresses. I feel your pain....

Re: Canadian geocoding headache

DavidWeisz — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:08:29 GMT

Hi Joe,

Thanks for looking in to this. I made a dual-range US address locator. I'm using ArcMap 10.3. The data I'm using contains addresses of restaurants in Ontario, so "Scraper" was just an example name of a street I made up. The format of the data is:

[STREET NAME and DIRECTION] ; [CITY] ; [STATE/PROVINCE] ; [POSTAL CODE]

Re: Canadian geocoding headache

JoeBorgione — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:18:22 GMT

see my edited response above....

Re: Canadian geocoding headache

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:34:48 GMT

freedom of information request? hmmm .... may not be in a ready to use format i would try a couple of addresses to see how they compare to city databases or even good old google maps/earth

Re: Canadian geocoding headache

DavidWeisz — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:49:38 GMT

Hey Dan,

They're in .CSV, and are formatted as mentioned above. I would assume those fields should be adequate for geocoding... unless you have a suggestion?

Re: Canadian geocoding headache

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 19:06:26 GMT

geocoder.ca: geocoding for North America - USA and Canada or OpenStreetMap

and several examples of geocoding structures from university map libraries exist ie. http://www.lib.uwo.ca/files/madgic/gis_help/geocoding_addressmatching.pdf

I just want to check that what they provided was sufficient for the geocoding since you may have to do some resructuring of the *.csv once you read it in (ie concatenating fields etc). When you get a 0% match, it is either the road network or the addresses that are deficient. We use DMTI or OpenStreetMap for teaching... the former is not free however.http://www.lib.uwo.ca/files/madgic/gis_help/geocoding_addressmatching.pdf

Re: Canadian geocoding headache

JeffWard — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 21:58:33 GMT

I have had problems with locators returning no results because the locator requires a zone. I fix this by going to the locator properties and expanding the "Geocoding Options" section and change the "Match with no zones" line to Yes. Then I am able to get the locator to find addresses. But it sounds like your address data uses zones so I don't know if that will help.

Re: Canadian geocoding headache

JoeBorgione — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 22:56:56 GMT

When I built my locator with the downloaded data I set it to accecpt addresses without zone. Goose eggs.