Geocoding Data
Helping organizations understand geographic relationships that impact the bottom line
Geocoding associates a street address to a latitude and longitude coordinate. While many address standardization programs can associate some geographic data to an address, such as postal, state or county codes, few can provide the actual location coordinates, latitude/longitude, of the corrected address. Instead, they require standardized data to be reprocessed by a secondary geocoding program, which frequently only offers “general” location positioning (ZIP or ZIP+4). Centrus provides the most accurate geocoding solutions utilizing ZIP, ZIP+4, street level, and parcel centroid level geocoding. By precisely defining the location of an address with a latitude and longitude coordinate, the Centrus Data Products geocoding databases provide parcel centroid and address level geocoding enabling a whole new way to geographically analyze your data.
Address standardization and geocoding both require a reference database. In the case of address standardization, the database is used for comparison purposes and to ensure that the standardized address meets the mailing requirements of the United States Postal Service. When it comes to geocoding, a spatial street network file is used to determine the correct geographic coordinate for the standardized address.
By combining these two types of data sources using proprietary processing logic, Centrus is able to create a unique, more complete database. In the Centrus database, each address has both USPS and geographic information associated with it. This information is applied to both the address matching and geocoding processes. Most CASS-certified vendors only use US Postal Service data as the matching universe, while geocoding vendors use only a street network database.