Contents

Geocoding

Overview of Geocoders

Geocoding, i.e. converting addresses into coordinates or vice versa, is a really common GIS task. Luckily, in Python there are nice libraries that makes the geocoding really easy. One of the libraries that can do the geocoding for us is geopy that makes it easy to locate the coordinates of addresses, cities, countries, and landmarks across the globe using third-party geocoders and other data sources.

As said, Geopy uses third-party geocoders - i.e. services that does the geocoding - to locate the addresses and it works with multiple different service providers such as:

Thus, there are plenty of geocoders where to choose from! However, for most of these services you might need to request so called API access-keys from the service provider to be able to use the service.

Luckily, Nominatim, which is a geocoder based on OpenStreetMap data does not require a API key to use their service if it is used for small scale geocoding jobs as the service is rate-limited to 1 request per second (3600 / hour). As we are only making a small set of queries, we can do the geocoding by using Nominatim.

Note

  • Note 1: If you need to do larger scale geocoding jobs, use and request an API key to some of the geocoders listed above.

  • Note 2: There are also other Python modules in addition to geopy that can do geocoding such as Geocoder.

Hint

You can get your access keys to e.g. Google Geocoding API from Google APIs console by creating a Project and enabling a that API from Library. Read a short introduction about using Google API Console from here.

Overview Geocoding in Geopandas