North River Geographic Systems Inc

Geospatial Problem Solving

addresses

The TN 911 Project

So next week is the TN GIS meeting at Montgomery Bell State Park. Which will be the first conference I’ve walked into in 2 years and 2 months. I’m doing two things while I’m there – well three:

  • Walk a lot
  • Teach an OSM workshop
  • Give a talk on the 911 project.

So – the 911 project. I actually haven’t said much about it in a while. Well…..it’s gotten interesting.

Back in 2000 I did a talk on PostGIS day about how this had worked and by that point the project was about 2 years old. At that point I had talked to a lot of people in TN on the project and the general feel was that this was a lone wolf project – in other words no one else would want to use it. Plus I was getting a little anxious on how to grow it. I was even advertising it as a “server” – which yes it’s all housed in postgresql/postgis with QGIS as a front end.

So I did something weird and tossed it up on github and started working on it. Cleaning up code. Issuing tickets to myself and generally working. Out of nowhere Kyle Snyder came in and cleaned up some code. Now there’s two of us “doing things”.

So what’s the point? Well the point is I hope more counties in TN actually use it. I’m going to discuss it next week and show a running example. Basically at this point we just about have the TN NG911 standard 95% “running” as published in the manual. Hopefully by next week we have some instructions. I’ve got a few menus set up for QGIS. You get a ton of flexibility “out of the box”. Plus all this cleanup is going to be good for Henry County as I’ll use it to update what they have after some more testing.

The next big thing is I’ve been experimenting with PyQGIS and the discussion between myself and Kyle has been “what can we offload to QGIS and what does postgis do better?”. Do we set up QGIS to do address ranges on roads? Maybe we set up some pre-address or auto-addressing. Possibly that’s a processing toolbox thing. What if we work it all out and leave it as a PostGIS script? We’ll figure it out.

Anyway – It’s pretty exciting. It is a bit messy currently. Kyle’s teaching me about Github Projects. I’m explaining my insane ideas. We’re pushing and pulling all that we can. It is nice to dump all this out into the open for everyone to pick at – maybe someone else in the 911 “address maintenance space” finds it useful.

Need some help? Yell.

Open Addresses

I’m old. I think today I’ve talked about AMLs, watershed Analysis, digitizing tables, and now I’m going to cap that off with something completely different. I should just say I’m well seasoned instead of old.

I’m getting used to “open data”. You hear it more and more and as I complained in one of my last blog posts open is only great if you can find the data.

I’m never exactly sure what a “open data ecosystem” is or if I would know if I ran into it….BUT – the US Open Data Institute is putting up a bounty for US Addresses. Which makes me chuckle a bit – and not in a bad way. The data gets fed into the OpenAddresses Initiative which, had I been paying more attention, I believe spun out of addressing in OpenStreetMap. The address file is up to 500 something Mb (you can download it). Well this fixes the last problem of finding the data.

I’m not sure of the familiarity of the local government with GitHub. I’m working my way into it. I’m pretty sure if someone from a local Gov’t asked someone at OpenAddresses they would probably help aforementioned local gov’t format the data into an acceptable form. Given the work I did last year with addressing…I can’t imagine a coherent file of address data. BUT….if you look at the map it’s happening. If you notice the SE US is particularly bare. That should be fixed.

So – upload your addresses. Learn some json. Learn a little “Git off my lawn hub”. Contribute.

Geocoding Tool from the Census Bureau

It was a bit of a running joke when I started the business. “How do you Geocode addresses?” and my usual answer was “I actually haven’t – I’ve never dealt with addresses”. Suddenly about 3 or 4 jobs later I had geocoded quite a bit and then last year I had the whole “learning about addresses” adventure in the islands.

So through email I got the following from a colleague:

The Census Bureau has released a new geocoding tool that allows users to find the census geographic areas that street addresses or address coordinates are located within.  The tool is available as an API and a web form.  In addition to a single address look-up, the tool also allows users to submit batches of up to 1,000 addresses at a time. The information in the geocoder comes from the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER database, which holds our geographic information used for censuses and surveys. The address ranges used in the geocoder are the same address ranges found in the TIGER/Line Shapefiles, which are derived from the Master Address File (MAF).

Additional information, including documentation, descriptions of the data in the geocoder, and FAQs are included on our geocoder website.    
Contact: geo.tiger@census.gov   |   (301) 763-1128

So this is kinda nice I think. A geocoder from the group I would expect a geocoder from. Most of my geocoding was against ArcGIS’s Geocoding Service and when it disappeared as a free service – well – I haven’t done any geocoding since.

For fun and giggles I did my old address and got this back:

Matched Address: 215 Jarnigan Ave, CHATTANOOGA, TN, 37405
Coordinates:X: -85.30156 Y: 35.062725
Tiger Line Id: 59307418 Side: L
Address Components: 

From Address: 203
To Address: 299
PreQualifier: 
PreDirection: 
PreType: 
Street Name: Jarnigan
SuffixType: Ave
SuffixDirection: 
SuffixQualifier: 
City: CHATTANOOGA
State: TN
Zip: 37405

So – I await the Happy hacking of tools and scripting…..I’m halfway tempted now to pretend I could write a QGIS Plugin or an arctoolbox model!

 

 

Fulcrum to the Rescue: Field Data Collection Made Easy in the U.S. Virgin Islands

I recently wrote a guest blog entry for Fulcrum app and figured I would add the link to it here. Enjoy!

Update – 12.05.13: Applied Geographics (AppGeo) has released their MapGeo of the USVI SAI pilot project. You can view the interactive web map containing the addresses for the pilot study areas on all three islands here: http://www.mapgeo.com/USVI/

Screenshot of MapGeo for the USVI SAI pilot project in Mon Bijou, St. Croix.

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Fulcrum to the Rescue: Field Data Collection Made Easy in the U.S. Virgin Islands

15 October 2013 by Carol Kraemer

 

Earlier this year, Applied Geographics (AppGeo) and Spatial Focus embarked on a 3 month pilot phase of an address reference system project on St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas – the three main islands of the U.S. Virgin Island Territory – for the Office of Lieutenant Governor Gregory R. Francis. 1500 of roughly 120,000 addresses covering the three islands were assigned during the pilot phase. The field crew was faced with having to develop procedures that would support a small local team who had limited experience with GIS technology and even more limited access to communication technology. This part of the story took place during the latter part of the pilot project (late May-June 2013), in the second and third pilot study areas in Cruz Bay, St. John and Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. The Fulcrum app was incorporated into the field data collection process making it possible to develop, deploy, implement and maintain mobile applications quickly and easily. Read more on the Fulcrum Blog…

Georgia URISA Luncheon: October 2013

When
TUESDAY
October 8, 2013
From 11:30am to 1:30pm

Where
Cobb County Safety Village
1220 Al Bishop Drive
Marietta, Georgia 30008

Presentation

Abu Dhabi, the Virgin Islands and You: The case for documenting address reference systems

Both Abu Dhabi and the US Virgin Islands are going through the process of creating new addressing systems. Each effort requires inventing rules for address assignment, rules that form address numbers into patterns that make sense for the people using them. The process of making those rules provide valuable illustrations for those of us working with addresses here in the US.

The set of rules for assigning addresses in a given place is called an Address Reference System (ARS). Documenting the ARS for any given location is an essential part of a sound addressing program. Lessons learned from places creating new rules provide a template for documenting your ARS. That documentation can help the addressing program live beyond the current staff, providing consistency over the long term.

This presentation will explore issues surrounding ARS creation in Abu Dhabi and the US Virgin Islands, and how those rule sets are documented using the FGDC Addressing Standard.

Presenter:

Sara Yurman, GISP

Spatial Focus