[R] computing distance in miles or km between 2 street addre

[David Scott]

On Thu, 6 Sep 2007, Nordlund, Dan (DSHS/RDA) wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
>> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Duncan Murdoch
>> Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 4:54 PM
>> To: ted.harding at manchester.ac.uk
>> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch; Philip James Smith
>> Subject: Re: [R] computing distance in miles or km between 2
>> street addre
>>
>> On 06/09/2007 6:17 PM, (Ted Harding) wrote:
>>> On 06-Sep-07 18:42:32, Philip James Smith wrote:
>>>> Hi R-ers:
>>>>
>>>> I need to compute the distance between 2 street addresses in
>>>> either km or miles. I do not care if the distance is a "shortest
>>>> driving route" or if it is "as the crow flies."
>>>>
>>>> Does anybody know how to do this? Can it be done in R? I have
>>>> thousands of addresses, so I think that Mapquest is out of the
>>>> question!
>>>>
>>>> Please rely to: philipsmith at alumni.albany.edu
>>>>
>>>> Thank you!
>>>> Phil Smith
>>>

some other contributions deleted here

>>
>
> There are a number of free address geocoding sites on the web, some of 
> which even support moderate amounts of batch geocoding for 
> non-commercial purposes.  The following URL is just one of the available 
> sites turned up by Googling "address geocoding free".  Of course, there 
> are also a number of commercial sites.
>
> http://www.batchgeocode.com/
>
> Hope this is helpful,
>
> Dan
>

This and similar advice is helpful, but be aware that in thousands of 
addresses your most likely problem is to be malformed addresses. Addresses 
can be misspelt, not keyed in correctly or whatever.

Companies that do geocoding often will do address cleanup. The way one of 
these companies works in New Zealand that I know of is that they run your 
address database through some matching software. Generally it still has 
unknown addresses. Then you can have the option of different levels of 
hand matching of the problem addresses.

David Scott




_________________________________________________________________
David Scott	Department of Statistics, Tamaki Campus
 		The University of Auckland, PB 92019
 		Auckland 1142,    NEW ZEALAND
Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 86830		Fax: +64 9 373 7000
Email:	d.scott at auckland.ac.nz

Graduate Officer, Department of Statistics
Director of Consulting, Department of Statistics