[RNFdev] Looking for postal code lat/lng's

[Dan Putler]

The Canadian government's free use license is the best one can hope  
for, and while not as flexible as being in the public domain (which  
is the legal requirement for data released by the US government), it  
is pretty darn flexible. With respect to FSAs, four to six years old  
probably isn't too bad. The only problems will be recently  
"urbanized" areas.

So the upshot is that while the data is not great, it data is OK, and  
is under a flexible enough license to useful.

Dan

On 17-Oct-06, at 10:55 AM, Sampson, David wrote:

> At our last meeting someone that works at rediscovery noted that the
> centorid data is old, 4-6 years.
>
> Also note some of the data might be way off.  Drop them a line to  
> double
> check, but I understand that all data through that site falls under a
> free use non-exclusive licence, check their user agreement.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Putler [mailto:putler at sauder.ubc.ca]
> Sent: October 17, 2006 13:48
> To: can_rnf at geodata.osgeo.org
> Subject: Re: [RNFdev] Looking for postal code lat/lng's
>
> Hi Lance,
>
> At the six digit postal code level, no. What is available are  
> centroids
> for forward sortation areas (known commonly as FSAs, which are the  
> first
> three digits of a Canada Post postal code). FSAs are at roughly the  
> same
> granularity as five digit US zip codes, while the full six digit  
> postal
> code is roughly equivalent to a US zip+4.
>
> There is an experimental web service that will dump an FSA centroid  
> as a
> gml file. Although, one that is a bit funky. You can access it using
> wget. The command below would allows you to get a centroid for the V0J
> FSA (this is a rural area in British Columbia) from a unix command  
> line.
>
> wget --post-
> data="version=1.0.0&request=GetPostalCode&sortarea=FSA&code=V0J" \
> --output-document="V0J.gml"\
> http://geoservices.cgdi.ca/cgi-bin/postalcode/postalcode.cgi
>
> Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the legal restrictions are in  
> terms of
> the use of this data. As Dave pointed out in his earlier email, Canada
> Post holds onto their data more tightly than does the US Postal  
> Service.
>
> Dan
>
> On 17-Oct-06, at 10:07 AM, Lance McKee wrote:
>
>> Hello.
>>
>> I'm creating a website for which it would be helpful to have a table
>> of Canada Postal Codes and their lat/lng coordinates. Is this data
>> available?  Jo Walsh thought you might be able to help me.
>>
>> Lance
>>
>> Lance McKee
>> 10 Circuit Avenue East
>> Worcester, MA 01603
>> 508-752-0108 phone/fax
>> 508-868-2295 cell
>> lancemckee at charter.net
>>
>>
>