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Geocode with StreetMap Premium new locators in ArcGIS Pro

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  1. Address locators for geocoding

There are two sets of locators included in StreetMap Premium. The classic locators are those that have been included with StreetMap Premium over the last few years but will be deprecated soon after 2020. The new locators are a new style similar to those used for the ArcGIS Online World Geocoding Service. However, because StreetMap Premium uses primarily HERE data for the source of address data, and the ArcGIS Online World Geocoding Service uses HERE data and other vendors or public sources of information, some countries' geocoding results may vary.

The new locators are included with each StreetMap Premium release as well as the separate Locator Update releases on My Esri. Sign in to your My Esri account to see the download files for the locators. All download files are in 7z format, and the data may span multiple files (so all files must be downloaded for the files to unzip correctly). If you do not already have 7-Zip installed on your computer, you will need to install this free software from www.7-zip.org. Once all the files are downloaded from My Esri and unzipped on your computer, you can add a locator in ArcGIS Pro by browsing to the location where the files were unzipped. The new locators are available for geocoding in ArcGIS Pro as long as you are licensed for the proper regional StreetMap Premium extension (for example, StreetMap Premium North America).

Note:

If you do not have the correct StreetMap Premium extension, a red exclamation point (!) appears next to the country locator name in the Catalog pane under Project > Locators, and the country locator name is unavailable in the Locate pane under the Options button Options in Provider Settings. For information about obtaining the StreetMap Premium extension, see Enable a StreetMap Premium extension.

Address locators for geocoding

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

  • Smaller, more efficient locator file sizes that require less system resources such as RAM.
  • Improved address-matching logic to deal with poorly formatted addresses and spelling errors.
  • Geosearch and batch geocoding of points of interest, such as the White House, the Golden Gate Bridge, or McDonald's.
  • Faster batch geocoding performance.
  • Ability to choose the Routing Location (the street centerline or entry point on the street) or the Address Location (the parcel or rooftop centroid) for batch geocoding results.
  • Ability to filter the batch geocoding results by specific geocoding match type, such as address types, postal, points of interest, and coordinates.
  • Enhanced support for street intersection geocoding that recognizes not only physical but logical intersections, such as underpasses and overpasses, cul-de-sacs, and roundabouts.
  • Enhanced support for matching house numbers that fall outside the existing street address house number range.
  • More control in reverse geocoding over the type of returned results (points of interest, postal, and so on) when the locator is published as a service.
  • Multiple countries are contained in one regional locator file, so batch geocoding can be run in one or multiple countries.
Note:

It is recommended that you always use these new locators with the latest releases of ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise, and that you review and install appropriate patches from Patches for ArcGIS StreetMap Premium on the ArcGIS website. A StreetMap Premium extension for ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Pro is required for the new locators or a geocoding service to function correctly. To create a geocoding service using these new locators, you may publish them from ArcGIS Pro to your portal, or publish them from ArcGIS Pro directly to your server; no Portal for ArcGIS installation necessary. For either option, you must install the StreetMap Premium extension for both ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Pro. To publish from ArcGIS Pro directly to your server, use either of the following methods.

In ArcGIS Pro 2.4 or later, do the following:

  1. First, create a connection to your server. See Connect to a GIS Server for information on how to create server connections. On the Add ArcGIS Server Connection dialog box, add your server URL, user name, and password, and check the Save Username / Password to Windows Credential Manager check box. If the connection is successful, the server connection is visible in the Catalog pane, under Servers.
  2. In the Catalog pane, under Servers, right-click your server connection, and click Publish > Geocode Service. On the Publish Geocode Service dialog box, enter the service details and finish publishing the locator.

In ArcGIS Pro 2.3.3 or later, do the following:

  1. First, create a connection to your server. See Connect to a GIS Server for information on how to create server connections. On the Add ArcGIS Server Connection dialog box, add your server URL, user name, and password, and check the Save Username / Password to Windows Credential Manager option. If the connection is successful, the server connection is visible in the Catalog pane under Servers.
  2. Next, modify the sample Python code. From the Analysis tab, open a Python window. Right-click the lower left corner of the Python window and click Load Code. Copy and paste the CreateGeocodeSDDraft sample Python script in 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 Server Connection (*.ags) and click Properties. Set Type to User Connection and click OK on the dialog box. Then, right-click your geocoding service name and click Add To Project. The geocoding service is ready to use with the Locate tool and for batch or reverse geocoding in ArcGIS Pro.

For details on publishing and using the new address locators in ArcGIS Enterprise, see the Share a locator and Introduction to finding places on a map topics in ArcGIS Pro.

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, and street name), Postal, Populated Place (block, sector, neighborhood, district, city, metro area, subregion, region, territory, country, and zone), Points of Interest, and Coordinates.

You can utilize categories with the new locators if, for instance, you want to geocode to only one or two match types (for example, PointAddress, StreetAddress, and so on). You can do this in the Locator Properties in ArcGIS Pro (available only in ArcGIS Pro 2.4.3 or later) by right-clicking the locator in the Catalog pane and clicking 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 want 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 box.

If you're using categories to return only SubAddress, PointAddress, and StreetAddress matches, the Minimum Match Score should be adjusted, which you can also do in the Locator Properties under Geocoding options. Esri recommends using a value of 94, which will maximize your match rate without introducing an unacceptable number of false positive matches. This can be adjusted if you find it is too restrictive (too high) and excluding too many good matches, or if it is 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 number of categories that you specify, it is 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.

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

Input mapping fields for addresses are standardized across the global locators and include the Address, Postal, Neighborhood, City, Subregion, and Region fields, although some countries do not use all four of the following administrative place fields as input:

  • Neighborhood—Smaller than City
  • City—City or equivalent
  • Subregion—Typically larger than City but smaller than Region
  • Region—State or Province or equivalent

When you use ArcGIS Pro for geocoding, you can browse for any of these address locators. For help on finding addresses or geocoding tables with these address locators, see Tutorial: Find Addresses.

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.

File output field definitions

The following file output field definitions may be helpful:

  • Addr_type—The match type for an address. Possible values are as follows:
    • SubAddress—A subset of point address with associated house numbers, building or unit numbers, and street names.
    • PointAddress—Point address with associated house numbers and street names.
    • BuildingName—Point address with an associated building name.
    • StreetAddress—Street centerlines with address ranges.
    • StreetInt—Street intersections derived from StreetAddress data.
    • StreetAddressExt—An interpolated StreetAddress match when the house number component of the address falls outside the existing StreetAddress house number range.
    • DistanceMarker—Street address that represents the linear distance along a street, typically in kilometers or miles from a designated origin location.
    • StreetName—Street centerlines with associated street names (no numbered address ranges).
    • Locality—Administrative areas such as municipalities, cities, and neighborhoods; typically the smallest administrative area.
    • PostalLoc—Postal code points combined with administrative boundaries.
    • PostalExt—Extended postal code points such as USPS ZIP+4.
    • Postal—Postal code points.
    • POI—Points of interest, such as populated places, business names, landmarks, and geographic names.
    • LatLong—An x,y coordinate pair is used for the search input.
    • XY-XY—Match based on the assumption that the first coordinate in the input is longitude and the second coordinate in the input is latitude.
    • YX-YX—Match based on the assumption that the first coordinate in the input is latitude and the second coordinate in the input is longitude.
    • MGRS—A Military Grid Reference System location.
  • 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
    • M—Matched
    • T—Tied (meaning that more than one match candidate has the same score)
    • U—Unmatched
  • Score—A number from 1 to 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 SubAddress, PointAddress, and StreetAddress 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 SubAddress and PointAddress matches, these fields store the decimal degree coordinates for the parcel centroid or rooftop 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 Preferred Location Type to either the Routing Location (the street centerline or entry point on the street) or the Address Location (the parcel centroid or rooftop centroid) for the geocoded results. You can also manage this in the locator files so that you get the preferred location when using 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, the value of Distance is zero.

For a complete list of possible locator output fields, see the ArcGIS REST API: World Geocoding Service documentation on the ArcGIS for Developers website.

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In this topic
  1. Address locators for geocoding