The Arkansas GIS Office is pleased to announce that we have deployed an updated geocoding service/locator onto the Arkansas Spatial Data Infrastructure.  This service is the result of feedback from the Arkansas GIS community that requested certain enhancements such as Suggest functionality and the capability to locate addresses that have a USPS Community place name. Additionally, this update formalizes the addition of the Municipal and Zipcode/ZIP+4 locators that were not in the previous iteration of the ASDI Composite Locator.

The Locator and its respective geocoding service are accessible via rest at http://gis.arkansas.gov/arcgis/rest/services/Locator/ASDI_Composite_Locator/GeocodeServer or can be downloaded for local use at http://geostor-imagery.geostor.org.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html?prefix=Maps/Locator/. Downloading the locator provides the capability to configure which locators of the composite are used and which are not, and if so in what order.  However, the locator will have to be downloaded again for source data updates or changes to be reflected, whereas with the rest geocoding service the update is transparent to the user. 

The ASDI Composite Locator consists of 5 different weighted Locators that can be used to locate addresses. Below lists and details the sourcing information for each locator contained within the composite. 

1: APF_LOCATOR – Address Point File (APF) Locator – First locator to be checked. It contains an index of all the addresses that are contained within the Address Point File. 

2: ACF_LOCATOR – Arkansas Centerline File (ACF) locator – Second locator to be checked. It contains an index of all the road centerlines that are contained with the Arkansas Centerline File.

3: ZIP9_LOCATOR – USPS ZIP+4 – Third locator to be checked. It contains an index of all USPS deliverable address ranges and their respective ZIP+4’s for every address range within Arkansas.

4. MUNI_LOCATOR – Municipal Boundary Locator – Fourth Locator to be checked. Contains a centroid location for all incorporated municipalities currently in the Municipal Boundaries file maintained by the Arkansas GIS Office. This locator is primarily for address data that does not contain a valid physical address and will be located to the center of Municipality in question. 

5: ZIPCODE_LOCATOR – USPS Zipcode – Fifth and final address based Locator. Contains a minimum bound polygon of all the Zipcodes that are currently listed in the USPS ZIP+4 product. This locator is primarily for address data that does not contain a valid physical address and will be located to the center of the Zipcode in question.