[Qgis-user] geocoding

[M.E.Dodd]

Thanks for the suggestion.  I thought this was possible in qgis just from a list of addresses (within limits on numbers of matches per day) but perhaps not.  Currently I am trying http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocoder/ however with yahoo to match against the results are of rather limited use. Most of the addresses are actually in uk but come back as showing in usa, perhaps I need to add country name.  a bit more worrying is exact same address shown up in different places and giving different coordinate pairs a number of miles apart.  There is also a limit of 1000 addresses.

From: QGIS [mailto:qgis at dandittmann.org]
Sent: 14 May 2012 16:21
To: qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Qgis-user] geocoding


On 05/14/2012 08:35 AM, M.E.Dodd wrote:
Is it possible to geocode a list of addresses? I have the geocoding plugin loaded and it works (api key sorted out) but not sure how to get the list of addresses into qgis as they have no x,y location info at the moment.  Am sure this question asked before but could not find the answer.


Dr Mike Dodd
Department of Environment, Earth and Ecosystems
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA

http://www.ispot.org.uk/
http://www.floodplainmeadows.org.uk/



I am aware of two potential solutions:



1) Locate a webservice and have that produce the Latitude/Longitude coordinate pairs.

This site has several: https://webgis.usc.edu/Services/Geocode/About/GeocoderList.aspx

Most as far as I can tell do not have support outside the United States however.



Ultimately it would be a nice feature to have added to the plugin.



2) The solution I had to go with was to use PostGIS outside of QGIS to generate the Latitude/Longitude pairs. This may not work depending on your setup, available time, knowledge level, budget, or level of access within your organization.



The available documentation I found assumes that United States Census Bureau data is used to geocode against. This solution could be made to work for other countries if the same/similar type of data released by the US Census Bureau is made available by the locality for which you wish to geocode for. Changes likely will be needed either to the setup scripts or the final database columns prior to loading data from your locality to take into account differences between how things are done in the US versus your locality. Examples might include length and data type of postal codes and state/provincial abbreviations.



Some information can be found here: http://postgis.refractions.net/documentation/manual-svn/Geocode.html

A setup guide http://www.letseehere.com/postgis-geocoder-using-tiger-2010-data







--

Dan Dittmann

-- 
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
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