[OSGeo-Discuss] Getting Started with Point in Polygon

[athletechs Customer Care]

Hello,

I am very new to geocoding.  My experience to date has been using 
algorithms to determine long/lat for an address and returning all 
addresses within a radius around a zip code.

I am now working with a youth sports organization that is dealing with 
multiple city entities to allocate field space for participants.  We are 
in the middle of a metropolitan area and the cities allocate field usage 
based on the percentage of participants living within their city limits. 
Zip code alone does not address this require because a zip code may fall 
into multiple cities and/or school districts.

We have all our participants geocoded with long/lat. We can get 
shapefile from either our state government 
(http://www.gis.leg.mn/html/download.html) or from TIGER. I have used 
Quantam GIS to load the shapefile and then overlay with our 
participants.  This looks cool, but we are dealing with 5000+ addresses.

We would like to produce a report for our 5000+ addresses with the city 
limits and school district they fall within.  This way we can summarize 
the information for the city administrators we are dealing with.

I think the "point in polygon" algorithms is the approach we need to 
take (could be wrong).  I have taken a look at some various APIs, but 
have been left confused and uncertain about the direction to go. 

Can anyone provide some direction on how we can get started with using 
the GeoTools API to load a shapefile form TIGER and then programically 
determine the city of residence and school district for each participant?

Thanks!
Dave
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