Address Geocoding - Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS - page 586

to the map. 20 Increase the outline width of the polygon shapefile to 4.0, make its outline color
red and its Fill Color Hollow or No Color. Compare the zip code boundaries with the selected
element, which, with perfect data, would be coincident. Using Identify, with “ZIP_Codes_in_405”
click on some polygons. In what section of the city is ZIP code 40511? ___________. Perhaps
label the features with ZIP. After your exploration, save the map as Lexington_ZIP_Codes.
Dismiss ArcMap.
More to Know—More Information Available
There is much, much more to know about address geocoding, but you have the basic idea. Addresses in
text form can be used to create geographic coordinate points. The next step, which we won't undertake,
would be to convert files of many addresses. To refer back to the example I used in the Overview—
suppose that you have a file of thousands of addresses on crime reports. You might like to see where, on
a map, these events occurred. You can submit this file to the software and get a map of the events.
Problems occur when an address yields no geographic point, or when an address presents you with two
or more possible points. The address geocoding software is sophisticated. For example, when there are
multiple possibilities, the software provides you with a “score” that tells you how good a match the input
address is with what's in the database.
To learn more, read Geocoding in ArcGIS , which exists as a paper manual available from Esri, or as a PDF
(Portable Document Format) file. 21 The filename is Geocoding_in_ArcGIS. You may find it in a folder named
Esri_Library\ArcGIS_Desktop.
20 ZIP codes data sets for the entire United States are available in the data sets that came with your ArcGIS suite. Look
for a folder named ESRIDATA\census.
21 Software for displaying such files is Acrobat Reader, from Adobe Systems ( www.adobe.com) .