isabella232 / lexington-geocoder

This project has migrated to python + flask!

This project has moved

Active development of this project is occuring in the streetscope repository.

This repository, the lexington-geocoder, is no longer active.

Streetscope

Streetscope is a service to allow people, but especially computer programs, to submit an address like '123 Main St.' and find its lat/lon coordinates and canonical parcel_id in the Lexington, KY Property Value Administrator's set of addresses.

Why are we doing this?

City agencies in Lexington sometimes disagree on the correct way to reference a single address or taxlot. (And sometimes someone entering data just makes a typo. Oops!) That makes it really hard to get a complete picture of a single property.

Streetscope allows different databases to know they're talking about the same address, even if it's not spelled exactly the same. It returns a geographic location and a parcel ID for matching addresses across databases to enable connections between these datasets and get a true picture of the city.

What will this do in the future?

• Accept files to geocode as a batch
• Emit performance metrics to indicate when this geocoder varies from other geocoders in geographic distance or ability to match an address
• Generalize for any city that has a reliable address dataset

Who is this made by?

Lexingteam!

• Erik Schwartz
• Lyzi Diamond
• Livien Yin

With completely indispensable help from Jonathan Hollinger and Shaye Rabold at Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government and David O'Neill, the Property Valuation Administrator

How to use it?

When programming, make an HTTP GET request to http://lexington-geocoder.herokuapp.com/geocode?query=449+w+4th

The geoJSON response:

{
"type": "FeatureCollection",
   "features": [
       {
	       	"type": "Feature",
	       	"geometry": {
	       		"type": "Point",
	        	"coordinates": [
		       		-84.4949386945456,
		       		38.055285154852555
	        	]
       		},
   	   		"properties": {
   	       		"formatted_address": "449 W FOURTH ST",
          		"parcel_id": "15602150"
       		}
       },
       ... { more features }
   ]
},

The json result can be previewed through the HTML UI.

Setup

• Install Elasticsearch or for osx homebrew users brew install elasticsearch
• Install PostgreSQL (this requirement may go away)
• Install Ruby
• Install csvkit

In your command line, run the following:

$ git clone https://github.com/codeforamerica/lexington-geocoder.git
$ cd lexington-geocoder
$ cp .env.sample .env
$ gem install bundler
$ bundle install

# make sure postgres is running, then:
$ createdb lexington_geocoder
$ csvsql --db postgresql:///lexington_geocoder --insert --table parcels data/ParcelCentroids.csv

# make sure elasticsearch is running then:
$ ruby index_addresses.rb
$ ... takes a few minutes
$ bundle exec rackup

Test it out

• If you have access to the 'curl' command

$ curl http://localhost:9292/geocode?query=449+w+4th ... should return some json!

• Ajax example in javascript