[OSGeo Africa] Address DB

Thu Aug 28 02:56:30 PDT 2014

Dear Sarel,

SANS 1883-1 provides a conceptual model for different address types in South Africa. It also establishes common terminology for South Africa. It is not an ‘implementable’ standard. The South African Post Office has been working on SANS 1883-2 for a while now. Its objective is to provide an XML schema for South African addresses, which would facilitate the capturing, verification etc. of addresses. My understanding was that they were also working on making address data available. I do not know what the latest status is. 

We are currently working on international address standards at ISO. ISO 19160-1 describes a conceptual model of addresses. Profile of ISO 19160-1 will describe the specific addressing system of a country. These profiles will be published on the ISO website and will help ‘understand’ the addresses of other countries, which is helpful for geocoding (many of the international geocoders initially were based on US-style addresses only). ISO 19160-4 explains how to write a template with specifications for address rendering on a postal mail item. Templates for some countries are already available on the website of the Universal Postal Union. 

The challenge with geocoding is that the addresses that have to be geocoded are seldomly formatted or presented in a ’standard’ way. Typically, the data has to be cleaned first and then there is some ’computational guessing', i.e. matching the text in the address to a street name or place name Here is an interesting article about the state of geocoding http://www.academia.edu/2803049/From_text_to_geographic_coordinates_The_current_state_of_geocoding… Standards can contribute to geocoding, because they can prescribe how ‘proper’ addresses should be captured and they provide hints about what to expect in an address that needs to be geocoded.

Hope this answers at least some of your questions…

Regards,
--
Serena Coetzee

Geography Building 3-5
Centre for Geoinformation Science, Department Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield, 0028, South Africa
email: serena.coetzee at up.ac.za Web: www.up.ac.za/cgis 
Mobile: +27 82 464 4294 · Tel: +27 12 420 3823 · Fax: +27 12 420 6385

On Aug 27, 2014, at 9:54 AM, S Coetzer <geotech.sarel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Zibusiso
> 
> Yes you are correct, Google, Bing, Open Street Maps does a great deal into maintaining there data.
> 
> Apart from the huge advantage of consuming these services for FREE via an API (sat-images, address data, navigation). Is it justifiable to state we can't consume these services because there is no adherence to South African standards ? Yes there is limitation on free use but even so, a purchased license would still rid you from mundane expensive data maintenance tasks let alone developing and hosting.
> 
> What is the point of an Service-oriented architecture system of we can't consume services? (rhetorical question) or does the word "Free License" make a service seem untrustworthy, not acceptable for corporate use?
> 
> Thanks for your reply.
> 
> 
> Regards
> 
> 
> 
> Sarel Coetzer 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Zibusiso Ncube <ncubezedm at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Sarel
> 
> I wont even try to tackle the other questions as I haven't studied Dr. Serena Cotzee's material enough to be able to hypothesize or give an educated answer, maybe she can seeing she is on this forum as well.....but i can only try and answer the hidden "(Google receives its data from ?)" question, as online maps is a passion of mine. However I wont answer from a research perspective but from a layman's view.
> 
> Google starts of with typical base data, parcels (e.g. cadastral maps) , streets, imagery etc which one can obtain in the open domain or buy,in some cases, then.... in mostly urban areas, but its no longer the case, Google collects address data physically using their Google cars and trikes or even third party "verification" or "ground truth" people, and don't forget online map user AND your vehicle navigation systems (some of which Google has data "collaborations" with) and smart phones and mobile computer applications (WAZE comes in mind) and any other interaction on their online maps e.g. users inputting address information to locate POIs or correcting their street locations. They don't have to collect all the addresses but enough to be able to interpolate, parcel to street address. 
> 
> I  would then like to make an educated guess and say that, they being a high tech company, they then run their complex algorithms on the data to further extract more information. But believe it or not, the truth of the matter is that there is a lot of actual human data collection and correction before the computers actually take over. They have the money for that as well as the technology to take over (storage,processing,etc) were humans cant.
> 
> I am sure an internet search can verify or prove otherwise what i am saying, but Googles data collection is SERIOUSLY MIND BOGGLING in terms of size and sources. long story short...it starts with the peoples data inputs and verifications (willingly or "otherwise").
>  
> Regards
> 
> Zibusiso M Ncube
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 10:45 PM, S Coetzer <geotech.sarel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I'm trying to find some opinions on two methods of address "geolocation" in SA.
> 
>  Serena Coetzee wrote a paper (2008) based on the SANS 1883 standard with what seems to be a logical UML design to allow you to assign addresses to an SG land parcel. (Adhering to a standard is the focus).
> 
> The current day Google Geolocation has an API which allows you to (with help of JQuery) type an address that presents you with an x/y location of this address and can pin point the exact land parcel. With the Google public open licence an application may use up to 1000 address geolocations searches per day.(Google receives its data from ?)
> 
> Why would an user want to implement SANS 1883 ?
> 
> Are there any SANS 1883 address DBs on a public domain accessible via an API ?
> 
> If we decide to do an SANS 1883 address system, perhaps we should provide an API.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Sarel Coetzer
> 
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