AI advance in geocoding with software developed in WA

Peter Dinham
Monday, 07 December 2009 14:08

IT Industry - Market

A researcher at Western Australia’s Curtin University of Technology says he has used artificial intelligence to develop new software that learns as it is used, an advance that could make online mapping and GPS more user-friendly, according to the researcher.

Matthew Hutchinson completed his PhD through Curtin’s Department of Spatial Sciences, a part of the Western Australian School of Mines, and has developed the prototype software – IntelliGeoLocator - as part of his PhD to use semantics to make the geocoding of street addresses more accurate and easier to use.

According to Hutchinson, the purpose of his research has been to “change the paradigm of geocode processing, creating software that learns from its interactions with the user.”

A geocoding process takes a reference to a physical street address and determines its’ location on the earth’s surface, and Hutchinson says the rationale behind this change in focus is that there are property and street addresses for which current geocoding software cannot resolve their locations.
 
“After a period of great progress, mapping programs are coming close to reaching their full potential using current geocoding techniques,”  Hutchinson says, adding that it is currently estimated that between 5-10 per cent of addresses will require new techniques to accurately geocode.

Hutchinson said that as recently as 2003, five per cent of addresses in rural areas were inaccurate by about three kilometres or more, and five per cent of all suburban addresses could not be geocoded within 421 meters.
 
“Although this has been improved significantly, many areas are still not accurate enough for purposes such as responding to emergency calls. Problems can be caused when there are two streets with the same name in the region, or a street number on the wrong side of the road.

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