SGF
Geocoding Paper
PROC
GEOCODE
Geocoding is
the conversion of an address into a location. Various parts of an
address can be used depending on how much precision is wanted in
that location.
PROC GEOCODE is a SAS/GRAPH procedure for
geocoding by street address, city, ZIP code, ZIP+4 and IP address.
Each geocoding method requires specific lookup data. Some of the
lookup data is installed with SAS, some is available below, and
others downloaded from government sources or data vendors. See the
SAS/GRAPH documentation for details on using these lookup data sets
with the GEOCODE Procedure.
Street
Geocoding
Street
geocoding for the U.S. was added to PROC GEOCODE in the third
maintenance release of SAS 9.2 (9.2M3). U.S. lookup data is
generated from Census Bureau TIGER/Line
shapefiles.
Canadian
street geocoding was added in SAS 9.4. Canadian lookup data is
generated from GeoBase National
Road Network
(NRN) files. The Canadian data will not work with PROC GEOCODE
releases prior to SAS 9.4.
The
zipped files below contain prebuilt geocoding data files, a
ReadMe.txt file with instructions, and a SAS program to import the
CSV data files into data sets. Some of the zipped files are large,
up to 1.7 Gb.
In
addition to downloading prebuilt U.S. or Canadian data, we also
provide the SAS programs where you can create lookup data from the
original source. The programs allow you to download TIGER or NRN
shapefiles for specific U.S. counties or Canadian provinces and
create the lookup data for more limited regions.
The
format of the street lookup data sets changed in SAS 9.4. Be careful
to download files from the appropriate section below for your SAS
release.
·
SAS
9.4 or Later
Prebuilt U.S. street lookup data from TIGER 2012:
StreetLookupData (9.4)-2012.zip
Program
to import U.S. TIGER files:
TIGER2Geocode (9.4).zip
Prebuilt
Canadian street lookup data:
StreetLookupDataCanada (9.4)-2013.zip
Program
to import Canadian NRN files:
GeoBase2Geocode.zip
·
SAS
9.3M2 or Earlier
Prebuilt
U.S. street lookup data for specific TIGER releases:
StreetLookupData (9.3)-2012.zip
StreetLookupData (9.3)-2011.zip
StreetLookupData (9.3)-2010.zip
Program
to import U.S. TIGER files:
TIGER2Geocode (9.3).zip
City
Geocoding
·
U.S.
Cities
All
versions of PROC GEOCODE support geocoding by U.S. city centroid.
The U.S. lookup data set varies by SAS release. See PROC GEOCODE in
your SAS/GRAPH documentation for information on the U.S. city lookup
data installed with your release.
·
World
Cities
International
city geocoding was added to PROC GEOCODE in the second maintenance
release of SAS 9.3 (9.3M2). The MAPSGFK.WORLD_CITIES data set is
installed as the default lookup data set. It is a subset of a much
larger data set. The complete WORLD_CITIES_ALL data set can be
downloaded from the Misc.
Updates page. See the LOOKUPCITY option in the PROC
GEOCODE documentation to use an alternate city lookup data set.
Postal
Code Geocoding
·
U.S.
ZIP Codes
SASHELP.ZIPCODE
is a data set of U.S. ZIP code centroids installed for ZIP
geocoding. Quarterly updates of this data set can be downloaded from
the Misc.
Updates page.
·
British
Postcodes
Free
centroid locations of Royal Mail postcodes in England and Scotland
are available from the British Ordnance Survey in their Code-Point
Open product. The CodePoint2Geocode.zip file contains
user instructions on acquiring the Code-Point data and a SAS program
to import it for lookup data use. Download that file:CodePoint2Geocode.zip
·
Australian
Postcodes
Free
Australia Post postcode boundaries are available from the Australian
Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in their Postal
Areas (POA) file. The ABS2Geocode.zip file contains user
instructions and a SAS program to import the boundary file, compute
polygon centroids and create the lookup data. Download that file:ABS2Geocode.zip
·
Canada
Postcodes
The
data vendor ZIPCodeDownload includes Canadian postcode centroid
locations in their Premium
Edition product. The ZIPCodeDownload2Geocode.zip file
contains instructions and a SAS program to import the Premium
Edition CSV file to create Canadian lookup data. Download that
file:ZIPCodeDownload2Geocode.zip
·
Other
Countries
Various
third party data vendors provide postcode location data for specific
countries. One vendor is MapMechanics
Use PROC IMPORT or a DATA step to import files for use as PROC
GEOCODE lookup data.
ZIP+4
Geocoding
·
Free
ZIP+4 Data
A
file containing ZIP+4 centers from 2006 is available. These ZIP+4
locations are based on the 2006 Second Edition TIGER/Line files from
the Census Bureau. That was the most recent TIGER/Line release which
contained ZIP+4 values. This file will be updated when the Census
Bureau replaces ZIP+4 values in a future TIGER release. As of the
2012 TIGER release, the ZIP+4 values had not yet been restored.
Download that 2006 ZIP+4 file:ZIP4_GEOCODE_DATA-2006.zip
·
Alternate
ZIP+4 Data
The
GEO*Data product containing current ZIP+4 locations can be purchased
from Melissa
Data. The autocall macro %GCDMEL9 imports GEO*Data files
into lookup data for ZIP+4 geocoding with PROC GEOCODE. See the
SAS/GRAPH documentation for details on this macro.
IP
Address Geocoding
Worldwide
IP address geocoding is supported by all PROC GEOCODE releases.
Lookup data is available from MaxMind in their free GeoLite
databases. The autocall macro %MAXMIND imports GeoLite files to
create lookup data. See PROC GEOCODE in the SAS/GRAPH documentation
for details on this macro.
