[ale] OT: Coordinate services

[Joshua Kite]

Robert,

When it comes to geolocation data, your two main choices are navteq and
teleatlas.  From what I understand, pretty much everybody gets their data
from one of these two sources.  Depending on the municipality, you might be
able to get some data from there, but I would not expect that they would
offer a service like you are seeking.  You might also look into a marketing
data provider such as melissadata.

I did some research on geolocation data for a project last year, and I was
surprised to find that you need to be very careful with this type of data.
The question you need to answer is, "how accurate does this data need to
be?"  The answer will determine the type of agreement you will need.  Most
data companies offer a basic service where there is little guarantee on the
accuracy of the data.  In most cases you will get the location to within the
street segment, but in some cases, especially where there is insufficient
address data, you will get back the lat/long of the serving post office.
This type of data is based on algorithms and is not reviewed by a person.
You then have several options for better quality data where the lat/long is
more likely to be accurate to within the lot lines, but you will pay more.
There are some cases where you can even pay for a company to research the
lat/long of an address if the quality appears to be too low, but this is
generally cost prohibitive.

Feel free to contact me offline if you would like, as I have some contacts
in the GIS world who might be able to give you better answers than I can.

Regards,

Josh Kite

On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Robert Coggins <ale at cogginsnet.com> wrote:

> All,
>
> Do any of you know of or recommend any professional services that will
> provide geolocation coordinates from a physical address?
>
> By professional service I mean a company that will allow my application
> to interface with them to pull these coordinates.  I need someone that
> will also provide support.
>
> Thanks all!
>
> Robert
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> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>
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