[GRASS-user] Gecoding Canadian Street Addresses.

[Sampson, David]

Hey Folks...

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)...

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 http://geocoder.ca/ . 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)

 With the PGL it seems that it is best to produce a product from scratch
as it stands right now.... 

The closest web based application was found at
http://www.batchgeocode.com/ 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.

So this brings me back to GRASS.... Stats can has its road netowkr file
with address ranges
http://www.statcan.ca/bsolc/english/bsolc?catno=92F0157X  which would
suggest that it could be used to produce interpolated responses...

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

1. identify street name
2. based on addreess number located street segment
3. Break up street segment into equal portion based on address ranges
4. Extract aproximate position
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
6. use this interpolated location as centroid of a property block.


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.

If you know of a candian service that can batch geocode and not conflict
with the PGL that would be good news.

Cheers
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