Address Validation and Geocoding

Overview

Veracross validates United States addresses and geocodes addresses worldwide where possible. Address validation involves grooming (“cleaning up”) address data. Geocoding involves setting latitude and longitude (radians, not degrees) for a household based on the address.

Address Validation

The primary purpose of address validation is to standardize values and add some otherwise missing data. After validation, common street abbreviations will be converted to display the expanded form of the word, instead. (e.g. St will be changed to Street and Ave will be changed to Avenue). United States addresses that are identifiable with the USPS and unique in the school’s database can be validated. Address validation requires a valid United States primary address, including primary address 1, city, state, and postal (zip) code (12345 and 12345-6789 formats accepted).

Validation occurs once automatically overnight after the primary address for a household is added or updated.

Address Geocoding

Worldwide addresses are geocoded by Veracross. Address geocoding requires an identifiable primary address 1, City, State, and Postal Code to proceed. If there is any extraneous data in one of those fields, geocoding may not provide a latitute and longitude result. Some regions have proven difficult to geocode, so it should not be expected to be perfect in all international situations. Geocoding, like validation, occurs once automatically overnight after the primary address for a household is entered for the first time or updated. Geocoding does not occur regularly for already-geocoded addresses. Geocoded latitude and longitude values may be found on the “Other” tab of the household record. The values are measured in radians and set to 6 decimal places, which is accurate within approximately 1.5 meters.

Typically, the address geocoded is the primary address. The exception to this is if the Active Household field is populated on the Household record — in this case, this address is the one that is geocoded,

Local vs. Non-Local groups

There are a few system groups and Development Classifications that calculate whether someone is “local” or not, and this utilizes geocoding and the system parameter “Local”. If a person’s home address is less than [the “local” parameter] distance from the school, then those people will be included in “local” groups. If their home address is greater than [the “local” parameter] distance from the school, then those people will be included in “non-local” groups.

This parameter is counted in miles or kilometers based on the primary unit of measurement in the country where your school is located.

For example, if the parameter is set to “20” for a school in India, any address geocoded to within 20km of the school will place people in “Local” groups, and any address geocoded to greater than 20km of the school will place people in “Non-Local” groups.