Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

16413
68
04-18-2011 11:34 AM
Greene_Chris
New Contributor II
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
Tags (2)
0 Kudos
68 Replies
BradNiemand
Esri Regular Contributor
It should support fractional house numbers.  Let me know if you have any issues with them once your data is ready.

Brad
0 Kudos
BrianOevermann
Occasional Contributor III
Is the fraction in a separate field?  It looks like there are two reasons that BrianO needed to add fractional types of addresses.
1. It looks like there was a need to support house numbers like 100 A1/2 main st.  Do you also require support for alpha characters in front of the fraction?  If not, the style should handle addresses like 100 1/2 main st.
2. It looks like the reference data that was being used had the fractional house number in a separate field as well which needed to be added to the style OR concatenation to the house number before the locator is built.


I just want to clarify our address structure. Regarding item #1, we don't have alpha character in front of the fraction but we do have alpha characters in our fractional field. (i.e. we may have a 100 A main st or a 100 1/2 main st, with the "A" or the "1/2" located in our fractional field).

Brad is correct on item #2.  We have a separate field which contains the fractional house number (the "A" or the "1/2") and I needed to add it to the style to get it recognized.

Sargent, your experience with the "W" vs. "West" is what I see as well, so it doesn't seem to be your data in particular.  My hypothesis was that the locator ideally wants all of the fields filled in when it does a match and knocks off a few points of confidence for each field that isn't present.  If the code blocks between my version and Brad's version are the same, I wonder if adding the fraction field upset some nuance of operation?  Maybe Brad's trained eye could take a quick look at my style and see if something is immediately at issue?

Brad, you say that your SingleHouseWithUnits style should support fractional house numbers.  Is that only if I first concatenate my house number and fractional fields?  If I recall, I couldn't get it to match with my fractionals before.
0 Kudos
BradNiemand
Esri Regular Contributor
I have attached a Briano's style with some updates.  The only difference between the style that I posted before and the style that I am attaching now is that it contains an extra field for the fractional house number.  Other than that, I have just included some of the fixes that I found and that will correct the "w vs west" issue.

As for the last question, you would need the house number and fractional house number in the same fields for the other style to work.

Brad
0 Kudos
BrianOevermann
Occasional Contributor III
Brad,

For my education, can you tell me where I went astray?  If you can explain things without writing a book I would appreciate knowing what I need to look out for in the future if I am modifying a style. Also, thank you for taking a look at my version of the style and taking the time to make the corrections!

Any chance this style and yours could be included in the next version of ArcGIS? It is long overdue...
0 Kudos
BradNiemand
Esri Regular Contributor
It wasn't that you went astray, it was that the style that you were working with was not handling this yet.  I am not too sure I can clarify without writing a book but in short, it had to do with the way the address was getting parsed at build time.  I fixed that in the last style I posted.

Brad
0 Kudos
BrianOevermann
Occasional Contributor III
Thanks, Brad.  I had guessed that the explanation would not be short and sweet--geocoding styles don't really lend themselves to nice, short explanations.

Final question: Does the latest fix require v10 SP2 to work properly or will it function in v10 SP1 as well?  We are still rolling over to SP2 so I want to be aware of any "gotchas".

Thanks again for your time in answering questions/tweaking styles.  I know you are a busy person.
0 Kudos
BradNiemand
Esri Regular Contributor
It should work but I have not tested it in 10.0 SP1 so I am not 100% sure.  If you have an issue though, let me know and I can take a closer look.

Brad
0 Kudos
BrianOevermann
Occasional Contributor III
Brad,

I am not seeing the fractional field in your edit of my style.  Is it possible that you attached your version of the style to the post instead?
0 Kudos
BradNiemand
Esri Regular Contributor
You are correct.  This is your style.

Brad
0 Kudos
DEWright_CA
Occasional Contributor III
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


Brian; is the County Assessor building addresses with Fractional's? Or is that being assumed by the City as correct? We are dealing with addressing in the county there and are finding that the fractionals are failing with USPS address standardizing; since that is not a general accepted value.

Thoughts?
0 Kudos