G-NAF Reflections on the past decade Presented by

Brian Marwick

Overview of presentation

• Who are PSMA Australia

• The main features of G-NAF

• Overview of methodology

• Reflections on the past ten years of building

and maintaining GNAF

an unlisted public company, established under Australia’s Corporations Act, wholly owned by the State, Territory and Australian Governments.

What

Why to ensure the substantial value inherent within national spatial datasets can be readily accessed so as to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to Australia

How by forming and managing a crucial supply chain between creators and users of fundamental spatial information by aggregating, integrating and distributing national spatial datasets.

PSMA Australia Limited

PSMA Australia Limited

PSMA Australia Limited is an unlisted public company, established under Australia’s Corporations Act, wholly owned by the State, Territory and Australian Governments.

What

Why To ensure that the substantial value inherently held within national spatial datasets can be readily accessed so as to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to Australia

How By forming and managing a crucial supply chain between creators of fundamental spatial information and users of this information by aggregating, integrating and distributing national spatial datasets.

• Transport & Topography (Roads, Railways, Airports)

• CadLite® (Cadastral parcels)

• Land Tenure

• Administrative Boundaries (Localities, LGA, Electoral)

• Postcode Boundaries

• Features of Interest

• G-NAF® (Geocoded National Address File)

Datasets built by PSMA

• the authoritative address index for Australia

• contains the State, Suburb, Street, Number and coordinate reference (geocode) for street addresses in Australia

• comprises addresses supplied by the states and territories of Australia, Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and Australia Post

• the G-NAF methodology developed by PSMA Australia uses a range of spatial and aspatial validation techniques

• first released in March 2004

• updated every three months – 39 updates now completed

• currently holds some 13.1 million principal addresses

G-NAF: Geocoded National Address File

• spatial and aspatial Validation of all addresses from multiple contributors against Gazetted Localities – PSMA Admin Boundaries

Road Centrelines – PSMA Transport

• geocodes assigned to addresses are flagged to indicate level of compliance with reference datasets Locality only = 5

Street Level = 4

Parcel / property level = 2

• addresses are also assigned a value indicating level of agreement between contributors (i.e. 2, 1, 0, -1 )

Overview of methodology

Overview of methodology G-NAF Maintenance Software (e.g. QLD)

STREET MATCH Process

LOCALITY MATCH Process

SCRUB Process

ADDRESS_DETAILS_CHAR

MERGE

GNAF_GNAF_QLD

Street Geocoder Process

ADDRESS_DETAILS_CHAR ADDRESS_DETAILS_CHAR

Address Geocoder Process

GNAF_QLD GNAF_AEC_QLD GNAF_AUSP_QLD

reference data files

Geocoded National

Address File (G-NAF)

G-NAF Maintenance

Pre-processing

G-NAF Maintenance

Software

Data Extraction

contributor data files

rule generation

log files

Reports

G-NAF Data

The unique combination of fields below constitutes a separate address which will generate a unique ADDRESS_DETAIL_PID

• STATE_ABBREVIATION • LOCALITY_NAME • PRIMARY_POSTCODE • STREET_NAME • STREET_TYPE • STREET_SUFFIX • NUMBER_FIRST_PREFIX • NUMBER_FIRST • NUMBER_FIRST_SUFFIX • NUMBER_LAST_PREFIX • NUMBER_LAST • NUMBER_LAST_SUFFIX • FLAT_NUMBER_PREFIX • FLAT_NUMBER • FLAT_NUMBER_SUFFIX • LEVEL_NUMBER

PSMA Australia Limited

PSMA Australia Limited is an unlisted public company, established under Australia’s Corporations Act, wholly owned by the State, Territory and Australian Governments.

What

Why To ensure that the substantial value inherently held within national spatial datasets can be readily accessed so as to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to Australia

How By forming and managing a crucial supply chain between creators of fundamental spatial information and users of this information by aggregating, integrating and distributing national spatial datasets.

• multiple contributors

• use of reference datasets to validate addresses

• quality of addressing

• the nature of addresses in Australia

Reflections on the past 10 years

2004 2014

Maximises the likelihood of all addresses being in the dataset Multiple contributors

PSMA Australia Limited

PSMA Australia Limited is an unlisted public company, established under Australia’s Corporations Act, wholly owned by the State, Territory and Australian Governments.

What

Why To ensure that the substantial value inherently held within national spatial datasets can be readily accessed so as to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to Australia

How By forming and managing a crucial supply chain between creators of fundamental spatial information and users of this information by aggregating, integrating and distributing national spatial datasets.

Multiple contributors Results in the duplication of addresses due to the differences in the address string used by contributors for the same site. Duplicates may exist in GNAF at: • Locality level

correct street name in wrong locality main highway vs local name Road type issue (e.g. Place vs Court)

Street Level Different street name such as properties with multiple street

frontages • Parcel level

Use of ranged addresses (e.g. 20 vs 20 – 26) Use of Level numbers (e.g. Level 5, 505/20 Smith St vs 505/20

Smith St) Use of number first suffix (e.g. 27A, 27B, 27C)

PSMA Australia Limited

PSMA Australia Limited is an unlisted public company, established under Australia’s Corporations Act, wholly owned by the State, Territory and Australian Governments.

What

Why To ensure that the substantial value inherently held within national spatial datasets can be readily accessed so as to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to Australia

How By forming and managing a crucial supply chain between creators of fundamental spatial information and users of this information by aggregating, integrating and distributing national spatial datasets.

• provides a focus for the alignment of addresses from multiple contributors

• adds to the authority of GNAF through enforced linkage to gazetted locality and street names

• at times, creates some challenges given gazetted locality and street names are not necessarily static

Use of Reference Datasets

Example LGA Orange NSW 2004 2006

Use of Reference Datasets

Nov 2013

Changes in street names also occur Use of Reference Datasets

Feb 2014

The Quality of Addressing Nationally has been a gradual progress

The Quality of Addressing Nationally has been a gradual progress Conf. 2

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Confidence Level of Addresses in G-NAF

PSMA Australia Limited

PSMA Australia Limited is an unlisted public company, established under Australia’s Corporations Act, wholly owned by the State, Territory and Australian Governments.

What

Why To ensure that the substantial value inherently held within national spatial datasets can be readily accessed so as to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to Australia

How By forming and managing a crucial supply chain between creators of fundamental spatial information and users of this information by aggregating, integrating and distributing national spatial datasets.

The nature of addresses in Australia What is an address? • address itself is simply an idea • an artefact of human communication

• a shared syntax for referring to location

• an agreement between our institutions regarding names,

numbers, and invisible administrative boundaries

PSMA Australia Limited

PSMA Australia Limited is an unlisted public company, established under Australia’s Corporations Act, wholly owned by the State, Territory and Australian Governments.

What

Why To ensure that the substantial value inherently held within national spatial datasets can be readily accessed so as to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to Australia

How By forming and managing a crucial supply chain between creators of fundamental spatial information and users of this information by aggregating, integrating and distributing national spatial datasets.

The nature of addresses in Australia And it is also

• a label often selected by people based upon social and

cultural preferences in preference to an official reference.

• used often enough such that it will exist in Government and commercial databases

• a data type that to date, lacks the mathematical consistency for rigorous matching and analysis at a national level

The nature of addresses in Australia

The nature of addresses in Australia

Conclusion • The past ten years have seen a significant improvement in addressing

in Australia • GNAF has demonstrated that the quality of addresses is dependent

on the quality of other foundation datasets, namely administrative boundaries and road centrelines.

• Addresses play an important role in how people communicate information and as such have a strong cultural component

• This needs to be recognised as the status of addresses move closer to an authoritative status as one of the foundation datasets.

• Addresses are playing a far greater role than even before in the community

• Finally the past ten years should be seen as the first phase of journey to meet the increased demand for consistency and currency.

www.psma.com.au

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