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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Hey Folks,</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I come back with more questions for "addressing" and geo locations issues… </FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Looking for a tool that can take a vector file (road segment network) and point data (FSA Centroids) to relate a road segment with the closest FSA(s). FSA's are the first three letters of a Canadian Postal Code</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">SI there a tool in GRASS to check this proximity with VECTOR? Or do we have to convert to raster and then back to vector?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Here is the background</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">1. using PAGC as a program that can do addressing based on blok face road segments and address ranges (</FONT><A HREF="http://www.pagcgeo.org/"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://www.pagcgeo.org/</FONT></U></A><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">2. Using the freely availbe road network file from Stats Canada (</FONT><A HREF="http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/92-500-GIE/2005001/how.htm"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/92-500-GIE/2005001/how.htm</FONT></U></A><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">3. Since postal code position data is not freely available in Canada you can only realy work with the first three characters (for free at least), or the Forward Sorting Address (FSA)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">4. The FSA list can be found in various places, I like the one on Wikipedia, although a full QC has not been done (</FONT><A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_K_Postal_Codes_of_Canada"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_K_Postal_Codes_of_Canada</FONT></U></A><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">5. Geoconnections has a gazateer service that will give out a centroid based on the FSA (one at a time of course) </FONT><A HREF="http://www.geoconnections.org/CGDI.cfm/fuseaction/developersCorner.details/id/4517/gcs.cfm"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://www.geoconnections.org/CGDI.cfm/fuseaction/developersCorner.details/id/4517/gcs.cfm</FONT></U></A></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">The problem is that in the road files there may be more than one MAIN STREET. So I’d like another criteria to match against… in the states the tiger data is good for zip codes… but postal codes in canada, well, cost a lot. So I'm thinking of the following rationelle</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">First, I need to create a FSA centroids shape file (that will later be freely distributed) by running a list of FSA's for a province through the gazateer.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Then here is where I think GRASS might be able to come in.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Match each roadsegment to the closest FSA centroid(s). Maybe the top three. Have this info dumped to the table. Export the new road file as a shp file and use this as reference data for PAGC. This would at least help narrow down the choices as it is unlikely to have two MAIN STREETS in one postal code.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">This is just an idea… so any input or LIKE experience would be welcome info</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Cheers</FONT>
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