Tiger Line Reverse Geocoder
June 25, 2006
We are testing two new reverse geocoding webservices.
The ‘find nearest address‘ web service finds the nearest street for a given point, determines whether the point is on the left or the right side of the street and interpolates the street number. The service then returns street name, street number, distance between the given point and the nearest point on the street in kilometres, county and state.
The ‘find nearest intersection‘ web service finds the nearest street for a given point, then it finds the nearest intersection of this street. It returns the nearest street, the street intersecting with this street at the next intersection, the distance between intersection and the given point in kilometres, county and state.
Both web services are using the so called ‘Tiger Line’ data set from the US census and are only available in the US. The quality and accuracy of the dataset can be visualized on a google maps tiger line mashup. Click on the map to see the closest street segments with street number on the left and right hand side of the segments. A further click on the street name will display the segment as a maps overlay:
October 31, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Looks good for Manhattan, not so good for smaller (pop 60K or so) municipalities in New Jersey. For example, feed the lat/long for zip 07960 to ‘find nearest address’. I understand that the service is beta, but if you consider this a problem rather than a feature I can provide more details.
November 1, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Thanks Allen, this is definitely a bug.
We have located the problem and are updating the database right now in order to fix it. New Jersey and some other states are already fixed. The rest should be fixed in the next couple of hours.
Let us know if you spot any other problems.
Thanks.
Marc
October 31, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Marc,
This seems to be an incredible piece of software. We have a need for this in law enforcement. Can you contact me at 954-471-8101 with you contact information.
Jeff
November 6, 2007 at 5:14 am
Sir,
i want to get Indian placenames by entering latitude and longitude using (reverse geocoding) in my project that uses google map.
sir Is there any codes, api or service you provide. if yes how can i purchase it.
plz guide me in this regard
thanking you
rizcompeer@gmail.com
November 6, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Rizwan
Our reverse geocoding services are described here :
http://www.geonames.org/export/reverse-geocoding.html
Cheers
Marc