Spelling Sensitivity in Geocoding

[JoeBorgione]

I have a question regarding spelling sensitivity as I have experienced something that really has me scratching my head:  right now I'm still using 9.3 locators in version 10.0 ArcGIS.

Typically, I use the out of the box defaults for Spelling, Candidate, and Match with a US Streets locator (80, 10, 60).  This allows a little wiggle room for spelling and they've always worked for me.  At one of the PSAPs I work at, the communities use Presidents names for streets. So

1600 S Lincoln Ave and

1600 S Monroe Blvd

are valid addresses

I can misspell Monroe with Monroee or Monre and get a hit.  But if I spell Lincoln as Lincon, it won't find it; Lincol works.  I've been misspelling others slightly and they seem to work, but LINCON is the holdout.  As anyone in 9-1-1 knows, a slight misspelling is easy when you are working a LE channel and it's traffic stop time...

Bruce Harold​

Tim Witt​

Jeff Ward​Chris Donohue, GISP​

[BruceHarold · Accepted solution]

Hi Joe

You are seeing the SOUNDEX algorithm at work, it isn't all that smart, consonants tend to have high value.

It is publicly documented, it will be on the web somewhere.

Technically you can also use the Metaphone function, but I would have to come out of retirement with 9.x locators to figure out how and whether it would help.

You can't use 10.x locators?

Regards

[ChrisDonohue__GISP]

Bruce:

I'm curious - are the 10.x locators using a different process that produces better results?  I only know bits and pieces of this....

Chris Donohue, GISP

[BruceHarold]

Hi, yes they sure are.  Soundex was only ever marginally suitable for English language locators, at 10.x we got real about going global and got into computational linguistics and common spelling issues that crop up in the call center scenario - what people hear versus how it should be spelled.

[JoeBorgione]

I'm actually doing a beta/pilot project with the CAD vendor and their new 10.2 implementation, so it's on the way; for now I'm stuck with 9.3 locators....