2. Geocoding - Advanced Techniques
July , 2012
Geocoding - Advanced Techniques
Agatha Wong
Brad Niemand
Sergey Ivanenko

3. Outline Overview of geocoding engine and matching process
Managing performance
Fine tuning locators – a few examples
Sharing locators

4. What This Workshop Does Not Cover
Basic geocoding process
Covered in the Geocoding: An Introduction Technical Workshop
Programming with ArcObjects, Web APIs
Address data model and tools
* Please meet with the geocoding team at the Spatial Analysis Island to discuss about these topics or issues you may have.

5. Overview of Geocoding Engine and Matching Process
Handling of ambiguous addresses
Example: 10 North Point Road
No penalty for missing zone information
Can parse any input field, not just Street Name
Returns matching address as it is written in the reference data
Single line input
Supports Unicode for international geocoding
Highly configurable
Single XML file

6. Demo
Finding a few interesting addresses

7. Geocoding Engine: Grammar
All supported forms of addresses are explicitly defined in a grammar.

8. Geocoding Engine : Grammar (continued)
Grammar example:
Address: House StreetName City // 380 New York St Redlands | StreetName “&” StreetName City // Main St & 2nd Ave Springfield | SpatialOperator Address ; // 100 ft SW from 5 Main St
StreetName: PreDir PreType Name SufType SufDir ;
House: number // | number “-” number // | number letter ; // 100A
PreDir: “N” | “E” | “W” | “S” | “NW” | “SW” | “NE” | “SE” | ;
PreType: “Ave” | “Hwy” | ;
SufType: “Ave” | “St” | “Rd” | ; …
Handles
ambiguous addresses
No “standardization”

9. Geocoding Engine : Aliases
Common abbreviated forms (aliases)
“Mt”, “Mtn”, “Mount”, “Mountain” mean the same in the context of a City name
Same for “View” vs. “Vw”
There are many ways to spell “Mountain View”
Mountain View
Mt View
Mtn View
Mount View
Mountain Vw
Mt Vw
Mtn Vw
Mount. Vw

10. Locator Styles

11. Displaying Locator Contents on Internet Browser

12. Locator Styles (with XML Editor)
Aliases

13. Customizing ArcGIS 10x Locators
An Esri Geocoding Technical Paper

14. Managing Performance Multi-threading Presort data Search timeout
Search candidates
Search extent

15. Locator Properties

16. Demo
Managing performance
Brad Niemand

17. Fine Tuning Locators – A Few Examples
Return candidates based on rank
Use parity values from reference data
Use multiple tables and feature classes for creating a locator

18. Demo
Adding ranks

19. Ranking
Incomplete or ambiguous information may result in multiple perfect matches (ties)
Candidate order is undetermined

20. Ranking (continued)
Affects candidate preference (candidate sorting) when the scores are equal
Styles that use ranking
US Address - City State
General - City State Country
General - Gazetteer

21. Ranking (continued)
Use RANK field to enforce candidate priority

22. Ranking (continued)
With RANK applied, preferred candidate returned as a match result

23. Ranking (continued)
Out of the box ranking order is ascending (from smallest to the largest number)
Can be changed in the *.loc.xml (or *lot.xml) configuration file

24. Demo
Using parity

25. House Range Parity Applies to street centerline locators
Affects house number match score 99
Main St 1 98 2

26. House Range Parity (continued)
Default handling of range parity
If both From and To houses are even, the range is assumed to have even house numbers
(same rule for odd numbers)
If From and To are mixed with odd and even numbers, the range is assumed to be of mixed parity
Both even and odd house numbers are assumed to be present along the segment

27. House Range Parity (continued)
Main St
100
198
implied EVEN parity
150 Main St matches range
151 Main St wrong parity – score deduction
Main St
101
198
implied MIXED parity
(implied parity BOTH)
150 Main St matches range
151 Main St matches range

28. House Range Parity (continued)
Downloadable style
Search for “locator parity” at
Optional support for parity fields
Parity codes
D – default (implied parity)
also blank value
E – even
O – odd
B – both (mixed parity)

29. House Range Parity (continued)
Before
After

30. Demo
Using multiple tables for building locators

31. Fine Tuning Locators – Multiple Tables
US Bureau of Census TIGER/line files and relationship tables

32. Fine Tuning Locators – Multiple Tables
US Bureau of Census TIGER/line files

33. Fine Tuning Locators – Multiple Tables (continued)
Custom locator style to support multiple tables

34. Fine Tuning Locators – Multiple Tables (continued)
Locator style can be found in Esri Resource Center

35. Sharing Locators
Locator Package
ArcGIS.com
Geocode services

36. Packing Locators as a File (.gcpk)

37. Packaging Locators and Sharing via ArcGIS.com

38. Demo
Packaging locators

39. Geocoding with a geocode service
ArcGIS Online (arcgis.com)

40. Sharing as a Geocode Service
Geocode services published with ArcGIS Server

41. Sharing Geocode Services in Cloud

42. Summary - ArcGIS 10.1 geocoding
Easier to configure settings for locators
New Locator Properties dialog box
More options to manage performance
Multi-threading
Use map extent
Set search time-out and maximum number of candidates
Improve matching quality
Rank
Parity
Sharing locators and services
Locator packages
ArcGIS.com
Geocode services

43. Resources and References
Esri Resource Centers

44. Additional Geocoding Sessions
Geocoding – An Introduction
Wednesday 1:30 PM, (Room 14A) – Offering II
ESRI Showcase Software Island Demo Theater
From a table of addresses to locations on the map (Tuesday 2:00 PM)
Visit the Spatial Analysis Island in the Exhibit Hall

45. Thank you for attending
Have fun at UC2012
Open for Questions
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Second Offering ID: 804

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