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For my research project at university I would like to geocode about 100-200 addresses in mostly rural areas in Australia.

I'm having problems finding a suitable geocoding online service. Services that are based on OSM are probably not detailed enough. Services that use Google for their reference data cannot be used as it would violate Google's Terms of Service.

Can anyone recommend a service, or does anyone have experience in Australia?

Thanks a lot!

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Are your addresses throughout Australia or confined to one state? I ask because last I knew (about 7 years ago) at least one state government had a rural addressing project going. – PolyGeo Mar 5 at 9:06
Thanks, I'm mainly interested in Victoria, but ideally would like to see some locations in SA and NSW as well... – Kim Mar 5 at 9:16
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It won't answer your question but this could be a starting point for South Australia and I suspect that (in this regard only ;-), Victoria may be more advanced. For NSW try the GURAS database. – PolyGeo Mar 5 at 9:22
I would just quietly use Google... It's only 200 addresses! – alexgleith Mar 20 at 0:36

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

The authoritative dataset for Victoria is VMAS, the Victorian Mapping and Address Service. Alternately you could try looking at the G-NAF, the Geographic National Address Framework from the PSMA (Public Service Mapping Agency). PSMA offer an online geocoding service that can take advantage of the VMAS and G-NAF address datasets (VMAS feeds into G-NAF but is slightly more up to date). My understanding is that the PSMA are currently in the process of upgrading this service.

With any luck your university will have access to this data - you may need to talk to your advisor. Alternately if you're doing the research in conjunction with any public service agency you should be able to get access through that agency - talk to the GIS manager. If you don't have access I think it can be quite expensive, but you may be able to talk to the PSMA about access as a researcher.

Alternately you could take a look at the ArcGIS World Geocoding Service, but I don't know how accurate that's likely to be.

As a last resort if you have access you could attempt to build a geocoder from the VicMap Address dataset, but that's probably going to be a pain in the long run. And again data access is prohibitively expensive if you don't already have acess through your university.

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up vote 1 down vote

If your uni doesn't already have access to the data (possibly try your central student data admin team), G-NAF data is what you want and the company I work for, Intech Solutions (intechsolutions.com.au) has a web service that can geocode to G-NAF nationally.

This is a commercial solution but would avoid the cost/time of building your own geocoder to the data.

Contact me via our website if you wish to discuss.

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