Reverse Geocoding Software

Reverse geocoding is used for vehicle tracking, for location based services and other applications where you have a gps signal with latitude and longitude and want to know information about the address or place this location represents.

With the help of GeoNames Reverse Geocoding Software you can easily integrate reverse geocoding functionality in your application. We provide the software to run the geocoding service and convert highly complex data from commercial vendors like NAVTEQ (input in GDF) into data structures optimized for fast, efficient and accurate reverse geocoding lookup.
Data provided by commercial vendors is highly complex and not directly suited for reverse geocoding. Our Software package includes conversion routines to preprocess the data and convert it into optimized data structures.

Attributes

The following attributes are available :

street
street number
lat/lng of address and distance to address
postal code
place name
county
state
route number like "I-265, KY-841"
speed category
speed restriction
functional road class
others like "is toll road"

Products and Services

Software for reverse geocoding
parser and converter for GDF (Geographic Data File) data
postgres database dump of converted data

Software Stack

The reverse geocoder software is using postgres with the postgis spatial extension and the java tomcat application server. The software is usually running on Linux but may easily be installed on Windows and all other platforms for which postgres/postgis and java is available.

Data and Coverage

This solution is based on commercial data and covers all countries where NAVTEQ have street level information including the US, Canada and Europe. You will need a license from NAVTEQ to use their data to run it.

Inexpensive solution for the US

For the United States we offer an alternative inexpensive reverse geocoding solution based on US Census data. NAVTEQ data is more accurate, more recent and has better coverage than US Census data. Commercial data has a background in powering navigational systems and also offers a far wider range of attributes than US Census data.
For many applications, however, inexpensive US Census data will be good enough. US Census data obviously is only available in the US.

Consulting

We provide consulting services for clients who wish to integrate reverse geocoding more closely into their application or wish to use additional attributes.