Beelines: Quality Control Methodology for Addresses

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

In 2017, the Montgomery County Department of Technology Services (DTS) Geographic Information Systems (GIS) team mapped lines (Beelines) connecting building footprints and building address points that fall on street centerlines. DTS-GIS maintains buildings for public safety E-911 CAD (computer aided dispatching), that includes updating addresses, building footprint shape (approximately 330k), 10 fields of pertinent attributes and attaching available PDF files (showing building access points, staircases, etc.). Planning such maintenance requires delineating for staff where building addresses fall on the street centerline as well as the distance from that point on the centerline to the actual location of the building footprint. Such tasks can be accomplished programmatically using desktop GIS software to create Beelines between points of duplicate addresses. By viewing beelines, possible errors in addresses can be ascertained by analyzing why the beeline is extremely long, crossing a centerline or crossing another Beeline. DTS-GIS compiled several databases to develop and analyze address data for the purpose of data integrity. The databases included building footprints, building address points, centerlines with address ranges, geocoded points from building addresses, aerial photography, and beelines. To accomplish producing quality addresses for databases, such as centerlines and building footprints, beelines were used to highlight possible address errors.