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About the address locators for geocoding

The address locators available with the StreetMap Premium for ArcGIS Middle East and Africa HERE 2017 Release 1 enhanced street dataset enable you to geocode and reverse geocode addresses in the Middle East and Africa. Individual address locators that are specific to countries in the Middle East and Africa are available, as well as composite locators that support multiple levels of geocoding for individual countries.

The following levels of geocoding are supported in the Middle East and Africa, although some countries do not include all six standardized levels: PointAddress, StreetAddress, StreetName, PostalLocality, Postal, and AdminPlaces. These standardized levels are combined into a global composite locator for each country.

Individual and composite locators are available for the following 20 countries: United Arab Emirates (ARE), Bahrain (BHR), Botswana (BWA), Egypt (EGY), Israel (ISR), Jordan (JOR), Kenya (KEN), Kuwait (KWT), Lebanon (LBN), Lesotho (LSO), Morocco (MAR), Mozambique (MOZ), Namibia (NAM), Nigeria (NGA), Oman (OMN), Qatar (QAT), Reunion (REU), Saudi Arabia (SAU), Swaziland (SWZ), and South Africa (ZAF). In addition to a global composite locator, some countries have a local composite when the local input mapping fields were able to be determined.

For more detail on the geocoding levels for each country, see the StreetMap Premium product coverage page.

Input mapping fields for addresses are standardized across the global composite locators and include the fields: Address, Postal, Neighborhood, City, Subregion, and Region; although some countries do not utilize all four administrative place fields as input:

These input mapping fields are localized for some countries in a local composite. For a list of these fields by country, see the localized input mapping fields.

Suggestions functionality is available in the Middle East and Africa locators when using ArcGIS Server 10.4.1 with the appropriate Geocoding Patch. After publishing a country composite locator to ArcGIS Server 10.4.1, you can consume the suggestions REST API in your own applications. If you are using individual locators, suggestions are enabled only in the StreetAddress, Postal, and AdminPlaces locators.

NOTE: To use the ArcGIS Locators provided for geocoding, you must install either ArcGIS Desktop or ArcGIS Server 10.4.1 or later. Esri strongly recommends that you install the appropriate Locators Patch or Geocoding Patch from Patches and Service Packs for StreetMap Premium for ArcGIS on the ArcGIS Enterprise website.

For details on publishing and using these address locators on ArcGIS Server, see the About publishing services in ArcGIS Server Help and Working with address locators and geocoding topics in ArcGIS Desktop Help.

NOTE: Creating geocoding services in ArcGIS Server with some of the larger StreetMap Premium locators can consume a significant amount of RAM on the ArcGIS Server machine. For example, on top of the RAM required to run ArcGIS Server (approximately 2 GB), you will need roughly an additional 0.7 GB of RAM per instance (SOC) to publish a geocoding service using the ZAF composite locator.

When you use ArcCatalog or ArcMap for geocoding, you can browse for any of these address locators. For details, see About managing address locators in ArcGIS Desktop Help.

The following address locators are available with the StreetMap Premium for ArcGIS Middle East and Africa HERE 2017 Release 1. For the values of XXX, see the countries list above:

Locator File Name Locator Name Description
XXX_PointAddress Country Address Points Locator Used for finding address locations in a country. Latitude/longitude coordinates are accurate to the address level.
XXX_StreetAddress Country Street Address Locator Used for finding street addresses in a country (e.g., 172 Victoria Road, Woodstock, Capetown 7925). Latitude/longitude coordinates are accurate to the street level.
XXX_StreetName Country Street Name Locator Used for finding street names in a country (e.g., Rue Sidi Bouloukate, Marrakech). Latitude/longitude coordinates represent the midpoint of the street segment.

XXX_PostalLocality

Country Postal Code by Locality Locator Used for finding postal codes within a locality (e.g., Al Nuzha, Riyadh, 12471). Latitude/longitude coordinates represent the approximate centroid of the postal code area within the city.
XXX_Postal Country Postal Locator Used for finding postal codes in a country (e.g., 97460, La Réunion). Latitude/longitude coordinates represent the approximate centroid of the postal code.
XXX_AdminPlaces Country Administrative Places Centroid Locator Used for finding administrative places in a country (e.g., عمان, الأردن, Amman, Jordan). Latitude/longitude coordinates represent the centroid of the administrative place.
XXX Country Global Composite Locator This composite locator for a country references one or more of the following individual locators in the following priority: PointAddress, StreetAddress, StreetName, PostalLocality, Postal, or AdminPlaces. Input mapping fields for addresses are standardized for all countries.
XXX_LocalComposite Country Local Composite Locator This composite locator for a country references one or more of the following individual locators in the following priority: PointAddress, StreetAddress, StreetName, PostalLocality, Postal, or AdminPlaces. Input mapping fields for addresses are localized for the country. See the localized input mapping fields.

 

File Output Field Definitions

The following File Output Field Definitions may be helpful:

Loc_name

When using a composite locator, this stores the name of the locator the address was matched to. The standard locator names are: PointAddress, StreetAddress, StreetName, PostalLocality, Postal, and AdminPlaces.

Addr_type

The match type for an address. Possible values include:

Match_addr

The full matched address formatted in the local country address schema. This is the correct address format based on address standards for a country.

Status

Score

The score is a value assigned to all potential candidates of an address match. The match score is based on how well the locations found in the reference data matches with the address data being searched. A score can range from 0–100, 100 being a perfect match.

Side

For Point Address and Street Address locators, this field indicates which side of the street (L or R) the matched address falls on.

DisplayX / DisplayY

For the Point Address locator, these fields store the decimal degree coordinates for the parcel centroid associated with each address, as the geocoded point feature is located on the street segment near the main entrance to the property.

NOTE: All PointAddress locators now provide the ability to change the default location of a matched address from the entry point on the street to the parcel centroid. To make this change, open the XXX_PointAddress.loc file in a text editor (Notepad++ is recommended), change the following line from

GeometryFromDisplayFields = false

to

GeometryFromDisplayFields = true

and save the file. To take advantage of this option, you must have ArcGIS Desktop or ArcGIS Server 10.4.1 or later installed with the appropriate Geocoding Patch from Patches and Service Packs for StreetMap Premium for ArcGIS on the ArcGIS Enterprise website.

Distance

The physical distance in meters from a candidate to a specified location. The Distance output value is calculated for each candidate when the Location input parameter is passed in a request using the Find or findAddressCandidates methods. If the Location parameter is not passed in a request, then the value of Distance is zero.

For a more complete list of possible locator output fields, see the ArcGIS REST API: World Geocoding Service documentation.