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addresses

Where

rjhale · Feb 15, 2015 ·

I had to go into Atlanta Saturday for a meeting at a park. It was a last minute decision first marked by my leaving 15 minutes later than I should have…..It was again reaffirmed that I hadn’t planned well when I was “halfway” there and used my phone to make it the rest of the way. I’m a big believer in getting lost. It’s a lifestyle.

I used waze to locate the Park. I like Waze for the main reason you can crowd source police locations and traffic accidents. I admit it – I don’t want a ticket. Waze put me right at the park. I stopped. Looked. I was technically “in” the park with no administration building in site. I pulled off the road and said “Well – here we go – mapping guy gets lost”. I opened Google. Navigated to the park from “within the park”. It had me turn around and drive 300 feet back to where Waze had placed me. It was then I uttered a stream of cursing that no doubt would have offended the sensibilities of every good church going person within 1000 feet of my car. I rolled my windows up. I hated on the squirrel in front of me, the happy bird dancing on a tree limb, and I wanted to kick a chipmunk.

Instead of using the name of the park I used the address of the Park and that sent me somewhere different. Back to the main road. Turn Left. I looked and there was the Administration Building. I turned into the driveway except it was a dead end. I had driven beyond the entrance because the address is the building – not the driveway. Traffic was horrible. When I stomped up to the door a young lady greeted me with “it happens to everyone..Map is wrong”. I should know better.

When I was in the Caribbean doing addressing the last word as I jumped on the plane was “Don’t be surprised if no one knows their address”. In the three months of working down there it was a 50/50 shot when I asked a resident what their address is…or what they thought their address could be. A teacher I know is working on verifying addresses of students. Same thing. “A lot of kids don’t know their address…..“. In the Caribbean everyone was direction oriented and nice about lost people “Raaandy – you go down to the yellow building, turn right, walk till you get to the tamarind tree……”

I had to learn my address growing up. 3rd grade was where my teacher, Ms Robinson, held her own version of civics for the kids. We had to answer a phone. Meet public leaders. Learn our address. There was a test. I think we even had to talk to police officers but my brain has grown fuzzy on the details from 35+ years ago. We were instructed that if we moved we should learn that new address.

My Credit card was cancelled. I was standing in line and bought a burrito and my card was declined. I went home and called the company. “Well we mailed you a new card.“. I didn’t get it. “We mailed it to your address. For security reasons can you tell me your address?” Yes it’s Blah! No? OK How about BLAH? No? Ehhhhhh OK – My old address from two years ago…and No? WHAT ABOUT THIS? Ohhhhh – I used that when I moved. People were stealing my mail and I switched to paperless statements and purchased a PO Box. You mailed the new card in October of last year? Awesome. Anyone used it? No….OK – here is my new address.

A professional colleague messaged me and wanted me to help tie the US National grid to her fire hydrants. I did it. I spent a terrible amount of time with my brain “seized” up as I tried to understand why it sucked. Yes I finally said it – I don’t think it’s worth the time anymore. It’s outdated. I’ve had more people talk about it. It’s come up time and again in conversation. So I assigned each fire hydrant to the US National Grid. It was easy once I got over the inaccuracy of it. It’s only good to about 30 feet. Once I figured that out I decided the only time it was going to be useful is if you go into an emergency with a 7.5 topographic map and a ruler. My last piece of advice was to give all emergency personnel a GPS and a months worth of batteries. Assign each hydrant a GPS’d ID. At the end of the month if you run out of batteries you have bigger problems than fire hydrants.

Last night I sat in a hospital. I’m not terribly good at it. I fidget. I think way too much. I ended up on an article of something so revolutionary it was going to tear the doors off modern addressing and make a monster truck rally sound like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. What3words. The earth has been divided up into 57 trillion squares. Each one gets three words. My front door is “freedom.caked.stuns”. Damn right it does. ‘MERICA!.

600-1276124580

 

I like the idea of having a three word address. I think ultimately it’s something a bit gimmicky or I guess I should say it might work for some areas…not so great for others. Having a 3 meter square on the ground with a unique identifier is great – except I’ve been places where that’s not enough. I’ve placed addresses every 5.28 feet on a job and at times I was scratching my head trying to make sure I had enough addresses. You can buy a one word address if the three words is too much to handle from What3words. Assuming People can read. If you can’t remember an address you aren’t going to remember three words. I know my parents wouldn’t and they can read. If I supplement freedom.cake.stuns (notice I’ve already mistyped my address – bonus points if you figure out where you end up) with my actual address then OK – you won’t accidentally leave my package next door. Of course, I’m only looking at my perspective. I’m not trying to deliver something to the wilds of Denmark. Who knows how this one plays out.

17+  years ago I was working on a job in North Carolina. I had left home way late. No smart phone just directions printed out from Map Quest. I drove across the state and pulled into town at midnight. I drove to the mapped address and no Holiday Inn. I finally found the Holiday Inn and they said “yeah – maps are wrong….happens to everyone“. Next day I’m in a boat looking at a dead dolphin and the guy working for NC DNR pulls out a GPS. Not just any GPS…..This thing was huge and it had something called “Selective Availability” turned off. I wanted to hold it. “NO – IF YOU AREN’T AUTHORIZED YOU CAN’T HOLD IT“. I wanted to look and he finally showed my location with a terribly long string of numbers. We wrote down the location and off we went. Later we went back and we couldn’t find the dolphin. Someone wrote the location down wrong.

I’m moving. Yesterday had me wondering where exactly. I know the general where. No – it’s not interrupting business for more than a day or two except it’s putting me more centrally located for work and life…and it’s a good thing and a long story. It made me a bit annoyed at the thought of having to haul Miso to a new spot.  Moving is no big deal ultimately. Home will arrange itself into a cohesive thing at some point. Her where has dropped down to a 3 meter square area thanks to no eyesight. Her address is two crates and a towel. High enough to sit in my lap when needed.

IMG_20140302_155428

According to the Internet – Confucious once said “No matter where you go – there you are”. Of course the next link down said that was wrong it was actually someone else – but don’t worry – everyone gets it confused because the internet is wrong.

 

Open Addresses

rjhale · Aug 5, 2014 ·

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

rjhale · Mar 23, 2014 ·

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

rjhale · Oct 30, 2013 ·

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.

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

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

rjhale · Oct 5, 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

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