Geospatial Data Enrichment through Address Geocoding: Challenges and Solutions

Abstract

Enriching geospatial data, particularly through address geocoding, is fundamental to many geospatial analytical solutions, facilitating resource allocation, accessibility assessment, and urban development planning. This paper explores the address geocoding approaches from traditional GIS-based methods to advanced data-driven solutions, emphasising their accuracy, efficiency, and complementarity. Geospatial data enrichment challenges are explored using the SemTUI framework and QGIS platform. SemTUI employs a data-driven approach that facilitates interactive semantic enrichment and address reconciliation. QGIS is utilised for address geocoding, using the MMQGIS plugin with two geocoding web services provided by OSM and Google. The comparison between SemTUI and QGIS workflows highlights their complementary strengths. SemTUI offers intuitive interfaces and an automated solution, while QGIS provides advanced geospatial visualisation and analysis capabilities. Practical applications in supply-demand analysis of social amenities and walkability index calculation demonstrate the significance of geocoding in urban planning. Further research efforts are focused on enhancing the integration between SemTUI and QGIS to improve the precision and performance of address geocoding and further spatial data analysis.