Address Geocoding - Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS - page 582

5. Start ArcMap. Add as data
_____ IGIS-Arc_ YourInitials \Address_Geocoding
\Lexington_Roads.mdb\Lex_Roads_DD83\Lex_Roads_2002
You will see the road network of Lexington, Kentucky. This dataset was derived from the
totally character-based TIGER files of the 2000 census. The geographic component, present
in the TIGER files as only character-based information giving longitude and latitude, has been
converted to (geo)graphic coordinates so it can be plotted. Some of the other character-based
information remains. 19
6. Make sure the display units Decimal Degrees. To one decimal place, what is the longitude of
Lexington? ________. The latitude? ________. Now make the display units Feet.
7. Open the attribute table. How many records are there? ________. (Hint: click on the icon that
gives you the last record.)
8. Look at the field names. Here you see the usual sorts of items: Feature Identifier (FID),
the FROM and TO nodes, and the length (meaningless, because it is in decimal degree
representation, which has no consistent scale). You also see the TIGER/Line ID (TLID), which is
a unique identifier for the road segment—unique nationwide, actually.
Recall that we want to use this data set to find a map-able geographical point by specifying
the address of the building at that point, For this, we need the street name (here, in the field
FENAME); its type, such as avenue, road, and so on (here, in the field FETYPE); direction
prefixes and suffixes (FEDIRP and FEDIRS); and the numerical address ranges for each segment
(i.e., block), which we will examine in detail shortly.
9. About how many unique feature types (e.g., Rd, Ave, Blvd) are there in this feature data set?
________. Try to identify what each of the abbreviations means. (Hint: Use Selection > Select By
Attributes. Construct the beginnings of an expression
[FETYPE] =
and then ask for Unique Values.)
Finding the Geographic Position of an Address “Manually”
To further understand address ranges, let's look at a particular block.
10. Using Select By Attributes (from Selection on the Main menu), locate all street segments whose
FENAME is Chinoe (shin-o-ee). Zoom to selected features. Now, using the Method “Add To Current
Selection” find those streets with FENAME of Cooper OR FENAME of Cochran. Again zoom to
19 If you are interested in geographically augmented street data for your city, it is available free from the Esri Web site.
It comes in zipped-up shapefile format, so getting to it requires a few steps, but keep in mind the word “free.” (These
steps were detailed in Chapter 6, Exercise 6-4 (Combining Demographic and Geographic Data) where you retrieved
TIGER data for Knoxville, Tennessee.) By the way, you can also unzip the files for free with Microsoft Windows.