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About the new address locators for geocoding

StreetMap Premium now includes a new set of locators that provide many benefits over the classic locators:

The new address locators available with the StreetMap Premium for ArcGIS Asia Pacific 2019 Release 1 street dataset enable you to geocode and reverse geocode addresses in Asia Pacific. Address locators for AUS (Australia), BRN (Brunei Darussalam), HKG (Hong Kong-China), IDN (Indonesia), IND (India), KHM (Cambodia), MAC (Macau-China), MYS (Malaysia), NZL (New Zealand), PHL (Philippines), SGP (Singapore), THA (Thailand), and VNM (Vietnam) and Asia Pacific are available.

NOTE: Esri strongly recommends that you always use these new locators with the latest releases of ArcGIS Pro and/or ArcGIS Enterprise, and that you review and install appropriate patches from Patches and Service Packs for StreetMap Premium for ArcGIS on the ArcGIS Enterprise website. A StreetMap Premium extension for ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Pro are required for the new locators or a geocoding service to function correctly.

The following geocoding match types and category filtering are supported in the new locators, although not all countries contain data for every level: Address (subaddress, point address, street address, distance marker, street intersection, street name); Postal; Populated Place (block, sector, neighborhood, district, city, metro area, subregion, region, territory, country, zone); Points of Interest; and Coordinates.

The new locators are included with each StreetMap Premium release as well as the separate quarterly Locator Update releases on My Esri.

For more detail on the geocoding coverage, quality levels for each country, and category filtering, see the ArcGIS REST API Geocode coverage page.

Input mapping fields for addresses are standardized across the global 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:

When you use ArcGIS Pro for geocoding, you can browse for any of these address locators. For details, see Introduction to locators and Geocode with StreetMap Premium new locators in ArcGIS Pro in ArcGIS Pro help and Use the new locators on the ArcGIS Enterprise web site.

You can utilize categories with the new locators if, for instance, you want to geocode to only one or two match types (i.e., PointAddress, StreetAddress, etc.). You can do this easily in the Locator Properties in ArcGIS Pro (available only in ArcGIS Pro 2.3 or higher) by right-clicking the locator in Catalog and selecting Locator Properties. Select Geocoding options on the left, and scroll down to the Categories to support section, where you can select only the categories that you wish to enable. If you're using the Geocode Addresses tool in ArcGIS Pro to do batch geocoding, you do not need to change categories in the Locator Properties, since the option to specify categories is already part of the tool's dialog.

If you're using categories to return only PointAddress and/or StreetAddress matches, the Minimum Match Score should be adjusted, which you can also do in the Locator Properties under Geocoding options. For the AUZ and NZL locators, Esri recommends using a value of 91 and 94, respectively, which will maximize your match rate without introducing an unacceptable number of false positive matches. This can be adjusted if you find it’s too restrictive (too high) and excluding too many good matches, or if it’s not restrictive enough (too low) and allowing for too many false positives. For example, if your input addresses are very clean and properly formatted, a higher Minimum Match Score may be used. Conversely, if your input addresses are of a lower quality because of missing address components or extra information, a lower value may result in more matches. Regardless of the category/categories that you specify, it’s always a good practice to review your own input address data and geocoding match results when deciding on a Minimum Match Score that best suits your needs. Note that as they are determined, recommended Minimum Match Scores for other Asia Pacific countries will also be made available.

Suggestions functionality is available in the new locators whether used directly in ArcGIS Pro or when published as a geocoding service. After publishing a new locator, you can consume the suggestions REST API in your own applications.

The following new address locators are available with StreetMap Premium for ArcGIS Asia Pacific 2019 Release 1:

Locator File Name Locator Name Description
Asia Pacific.loc Asia Pacific Locator Contains points of interest and address data for 57 Asia Pacific countries.
AUS.loc Australia Locator Contains points of interest and address data (street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in Australia.
BRN.loc Brunei Darussalam Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in Brunei Darussalam.
HKG.loc Hong Kong-China Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in Hong Kong-China.
IDN.loc Indonesia Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in Indonesia.
IND.loc India Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in India.
KHM.loc Cambodia Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, and populated place centroids) in Cambodia.
MAC.loc Macau-China Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in Macau-China.
MYS.loc Malaysia Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in Malaysia.
NZL.loc New Zealand Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in New Zealand.
PHL.loc Philippines Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in the Philippines.
SGP.loc Singapore Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in Singapore.
THA.loc Thailand Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in Thailand.
VNM.loc Vietnam Locator Contains points of interest and address data (point address, street address, street names, postal centroids, and populated place centroids) in Vietnam.

Creating geocoding services

To create a geocoding service using these new locators you may publish them from ArcGIS Pro to your Portal, or starting with ArcGIS Pro 2.3.3 or later, publish them from ArcGIS Pro directly to your Server, no Portal installation necessary. For either option, you must install the StreetMap Premium extension for both ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Pro.

In ArcGIS Pro 2.4 or later:

  1. First, create a connection to your Server. See the ArcGIS Pro help for additional information on how to create Server connections. In the Add ArcGIS Server Connection dialog box, add your Server URL, username, password, and check the Save Username / Password to connection file option. If the connection is successful, your Server connection is now visible in the Catalog pane under Servers.
  2. Then, in the Catalog pane under Servers right-click your server connection. Go to Publish > Geocode Service. Then in the Publish Geocode Service dialog box, enter the service details and finish publishing the desired locator.

In ArcGIS Pro 2.3.3:

  1. First, create a connection to your Server. See the ArcGIS Pro help for additional information on how to create Server connections. In the Add ArcGIS Server Connection dialog box, add your Server URL, username, password, and check the Save Username / Password to connection file option. If the connection is successful, your Server connection is now visible in the Catalog pane under Servers.
  2. Next, modify the sample Python code. Under the Analysis Tab, open a Python window. In the lower-left corner of the Python window, right-click and choose the Load Code option. Copy and paste the 'CreateGeocodeSDDraft' sample Python script into the window. Modify the parameters section for your specific folder location and the Server connection that you just created.
  3. Run the Python code. After making your edits to 'CreateGeocodeSDDraft', press <Enter> to run the code. You may have to press <Enter> twice to run the code. The Python script creates a service definition draft file (sddraft) and a service definition file (sd) in your specified folder and then publishes the sd file to your Server.
  4. Use the newly published geocoding service. Right-click your Server Connection (*.ags) and go to Properties. Set the Type to 'User Connection' and click OK in the dialog box. Then, right-click your geocoding service name and Add To Project. The geocoding service is ready to use with the Locate tool and batch or reverse geocoding in ArcGIS Pro.

For details on publishing and using these address locators in ArcGIS Enterprise, see the Sharing a locator to your portal and the geocoding topics in ArcGIS Pro Help. If you wish to restrict use of a geocoding service to certain users within your organization, create a group in your Enterprise Portal. Then, publish a geocoding service and share the service only with that group. Remember to invite the designated users to the group.

NOTE: Creating geocoding services with some of the larger new SMP 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 250 MB of RAM per instance (SOC) to publish a geocoding service using the AUS locator. In addition, with all other things being equal, the use of a solid state drive (SSD) instead of a hard disk drive (HDD) will improve batch geocoding performance.

File Output Field Definitions

The following File Output Field Definitions may be helpful:

Addr_type

The indicator of precision of 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

A number from 1–100 indicating the degree to which the input tokens in a geocoding request match the address components in a candidate record. A score of 100 represents a perfect match, while lower scores represent decreasing match accuracy.

Side

For sub address, point address, and street address matches, this field indicates which side of the street (L or R) the address falls on relative to feature digitization rather than direction of travel along the street.

DisplayX/DisplayY

For the Sub Address and Point Address matches, 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 by default.

NOTE: When batch geocoding in ArcGIS Pro with the Geocode Addresses tool, the new locators provide the option to set the Preferred Location Type to be either the Routing Location (the street centerline/entry point on the street) or the Address Location (the parcel centroid) for the geocoded results. You can also manage this in the locator files so that you get the preferred location when doing a Locate in ArcGIS Pro. Right-click the locator in Catalog and select Locator Properties. Select Geocoding options on the left. Under Preferred location type, choose Routing Location or Address Location.

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.