Geocoding – the assignment of coordinates to a geographic reference –
is the key task required to enable geographic searching of historic
databases. However, while geocoding technology has continued to advance
for contemporary databases, a temporally-enabled geocoder has yet to be
developed. Such a service would take not only an
address/intersection/place name as an input but also a time period,
enabling accurate identification of location, even when street names
have changed substantially. For example, '313 64 1/2 St' was a valid
street address in the mid-1800’s. In 1897, '64 1/2 Street' was changed
to 'Simpson St'. So now the same address would be '313 N Simpson St'.
Additional complexity arises when streets are struck from the city plan
are known by multiple names.
The research project, led by Michael
McLarnon and Robert Cheetham, seeks to develop a geocoding interface
that would accept an address and a year (or perhaps a range of years)
and then trace the record forward in time to the contemporary street or
address and return the corresponding coordinate pair. Two of Avencia's
interns, Heather Newlin and Jason Hutchins, are helping develop a
comprehensive street names database.