The street address conversion system was originally conceived to provide an automated technique for translating ordinary street addresses to grid coordinates. The aim was to attain complete flexibility in the formulation of data analysis zones by aggregating data on the basis of grid coordinates. The only prerequisite for use of the system was a fairly regular street and addressing pattern. Operational experience in Ottawa has brought to light two major problems in applying the system' /1/ when addressing becomes irregular in certain places, and /2/ when the areal extent of urban postal addresses does not coincide with the area of interest, or urban and rural areas are interspersed. The basic logic of the computer programs has been shown to have the capability of accommodating the modifications necessary to solve the problems related to irregular addressing. The second problem has led to an expanded concept of the system- that of geo-coding from property descriptions in rural or semi-rural areas. In the Ottawa area the method of rural land subdivision is such that the techniques used in the street address conversion system can be utilized to automatically geo-code rural data to areal units of 100 acres in size. /author/.
Abstract