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<TITLE>Gecoding Canadian Street Addresses.</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Hey Folks…</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I am interested in creating datasets for the Ottawa area of Ontario Canada based on Street Addresses. There are some web based geocoders out there but they would render a product that could not be released under the PGL (Public Geodata Licence)…</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">And other services that come close want to ensure its users are non-profit and seel comercial API's for XML parsing…. For example found here </FONT><A HREF="http://geocoder.ca/"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://geocoder.ca/</FONT></U></A><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"> . And this sucks for future use of such a dataset by for-profit groups… it is mentioned the datasource is from stats can, which got me thinking (see bellow)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"> With the PGL it seems that it is best to produce a product from scratch as it stands right now…. </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">The closest web based application was found at </FONT><A HREF="http://www.batchgeocode.com/"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://www.batchgeocode.com/</FONT></U></A><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"> which works well for canada and the states… but again uses a YAHOO API and comercial datset as its raw source and there is no clear indication as to the licence restrictions of derivative products.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">So this brings me back to GRASS…. Stats can has its road netowkr file with address ranges </FONT><A HREF="http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92F0157X"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92F0157X</FONT></U></A><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"> which would suggest that it could be used to produce interpolated responses…</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">So I am wondering if anyone has used GRASS to do this, or if there is a tool in grass already… the basic steps would be</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">1. identify street name</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">2. based on addreess number located street segment</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">3. Break up street segment into equal portion based on address ranges</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">4. Extract aproximate position</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">5. based on odd or even ranges create a SETBACK variable to move the point to either left or right of street segment. And base it on a common city right of way say 5 meters</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">6. use this interpolated location as centroid of a property block.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">The other option would be to obtain the legal surveys… but something tells me this is not free and is probably more accurate than what a community based dataset requires… that's why major companies sell data at huge costs… that is not why I would like a public accessible addressing method.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">If you know of a candian service that can batch geocode and not conflict with the PGL that would be good news.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Cheers</FONT>
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