Geocoding Addresses with Apartment Units

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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
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68 Replies
NickTaylor1
New Contributor
Prectaylor,

Are you using the style that Brad has posted or the one I have posted?  Are you on 10.1 or an earlier version? And the way I read your post, the only issue is with the 'NE' directional?  Extremely odd...

Maybe Brad (or others) have some insight.  I can successfully use all directionals--in 10.0 as well as 10.1.

There isn't an extra space in your prefix data field for the 'NE' by chance?  (i.e.  ' NE' instead of 'NE' )

Brian



I am using 10.1. I have used both of the styles without a great deal of success. There are no strange spaces and I have even tried to have it look at only the direction. I am going to try to dig into the xml and will update with any new information. Thanks all for your help.
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Chad__Admin_Quinn
New Contributor II
Is there a Locator with Unit .loc tool for 10.1 SP1?
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SandraLuken
Occasional Contributor
The locator xml provided has been very useful, but seems to require the addresses to be entered as '123 Main St. B' or '123 Main St 9' (where 9 in this example represents the unit number).  What needs to be done to the xml to allow users to enter as a single line address '123B Main St'? 

ArcGIS 10.0 SP5

Sandra
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BrianOevermann
Occasional Contributor III
Sandra,

If you are using the version that Brad has posted, the "B" in 123B Main St would need to be part of the house number field. [Correct me if I am wrong about that, Brad]

For the version I posted, here is a bit of context...

Our City is part of a regional alliance that happens to have a long-standing address layer schema standard for use in certain regional applications.  The schema has its shortcomings and many cities maintain their address layers with fields that meet their individual needs but can still be exported to that regional schema for data sharing.

We have some legacy addressing that includes fractional halves (i.e. 123 1/2 Main St) as well as your example of 123B Main St.  While the "B" is really a unit indicator, these legacy addresses have used the 123B format for so long that we simply treat them as fractionals.  But we are a reasonably small city and the number of these is small.  All newer addressing adheres to the 123 Main St Unit B format.

The regional schema mentioned above is a numeric field, so that prevents me from concatenating the fractional half or letter into the house number.  Thus, my version of the locator includes a fractional field as well as the unit field.

For those legacy addresses, the "B" goes into the fractional field and not the unit field. In the locator, a space is required between the 123 and the "B".  Otherwise the 123B will be searched against the house number only instead of the house number and fractional fields.

All of that said, if you standardize your "A" and "B" units as 123A and 123B, you are likely better off either making them a part of the house number or using the fractional field rather than the unit field.  You really need to proceed based on how you expect users to enter the address for matching, and there is no right answer.

Maybe others have some additional ideas.  Apologies for the length but I wanted to provide some context regarding why my version is built the way it is.  Admittedly, my primary intent was to create something that worked for us.  The fact that others might be able to utilize it was simply a bonus.

I do hope that ESRI begins to provide these locators in the "base code".
BradNiemand
Esri Regular Contributor
Attached is a locator style that might help with the issues you are seeing with Standardization.

Brad
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AnnieSitu
New Contributor

Hi Brad,

I am running 10.2.1, the locator doesn't seem to work. Do you have a chance to work on and provide us a newer version? Your help is very much appreciated.

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DEWright_CA
Occasional Contributor III

Annie, I know this is not the kind of response you would like. But ESRI is planning to have a Sub-Unit capable Geocoder available at 10.3; I had the opportunity to meet with them at the UC and they are making a serious effort to have this functionality in place.

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KimOllivier
Occasional Contributor III
Hi Brad,



When you pass in an address without a unit designator to the get candidates method, addresses having a unit are ranked the same as an exact match without a unit.  This effectively means that the geocoding operation does not perform correctly for any location having secondary addresses (has units) AND a primary address (no units), such as an apartment building with a office at the primary address. 

Roy


Earlier in the forum this is exactly what was asked for. You can't please everyone all of the time. I would like this behaviour too, so I am fiddling with the configuration file to change it.
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DanMcCoy
Occasional Contributor III
Please vote to include  (and support)unit locator styles in the core product.
http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=08730000000by67
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