Why do we need better civic address management?

New requirements call for the need of better and more optimized management of civic addressing.

Civic addressing refers to the street number and street name of a physical location – most often a home or business. In Canada, there are upwards of 17 million addresses; it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination that errors in addressing do happen. What are the implications of these errors? A little annoyance when your online purchase is not delivered on a promised date. Perhaps a failed business transaction caused by a delayed piece of certified mail. Perhaps a more serious threat to emergency service response times.

The CRTC took aim at that latter point with Next Generation 9-1-1. Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) will see the transformation of the current 9-1-1 systems to be powered by GIS data and technology. One crucial piece to the NG9-1-1 data puzzle is civic address data, which will be useful in determining the caller’s location.

NG9-1-1 will introduce GIS data standards as prescribed by the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) and will encourage data consistency across municipal boundaries. In the near future, civic address data will need to be captured in a NENA compliant form factor. Until then, the lack of addressing data standards poses a risk for data discrepancies even between neighbouring cities.

Thus, municipalities are encouraged to make plans to assess the quality and management of their address data. The Address Management Application, for example, can be used to manage an inventory of civic addresses and ensure their accuracy, completeness, and compliance with NG9-1-1. Its configurable template can be used by municipalities and 911 GIS data aggregators to optimize the creation, maintenance, and use of authoritative address information.

To illustrate the benefits further, here are some quick facts:

1. Compliance with NG9-1-1 GIS data requirements

The Address Management Application will convert your data to meet the prescribed NENA standards. New and modified address records will follow the format necessary for NG9-1-1.

2. Full address editing including create, modify, and retire functionality

Intuitive design allows the user to perform popular addressing functions through the ArcGIS Online-based app.

3. Built-in addressing quality control

Follow the correct standards and format with automatic prompts when errors are identified. The user cannot proceed until the error is resolved.

If you’re interested in learning more, join us for our free webinar, Get NG9-1-1 Ready with the Address Management App on Wednesday, February 24 at 1:00pm ET, where we’ll take you step-by-step through configuring the template to suit your addressing needs and demonstrate the key functions users will perform, such as creating address points and placing them along roads and in parcels. We will also hold Q&A at the end and take your questions.  Register now to save your seat.

For more information on the Address Management Application, please visit our webpage and view our Story Map.

This post was translated to French and can be viewed here.