Geocoding¶
Overview of Geocoders¶
Geocoding is the process of transforming place names or addresses into coordinates. In this lesson we will learn how to geocode addresses using Geopandas and geopy. There are also other Python modules in addition to geopy that can do geocoding such as Geocoder.
Geocoding libraries make it easy to locate the coordinates of addresses, cities, countries, and landmarks across the globe using different geocoding web services (“geocoders”). In practice, geocoders are often Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) where you can send requests, and receive responses in the form of place names, addresses and coordinates.
Several different geocoding services are available via geopy, including these:
Chec the Geopy documentation for more details about how to use each service via Python.
As you see, there are plenty of geocoders where to choose from! The quality of the geocoders might differ depending on the underlying data. For example, some addresses might exists on OpenStreetMap, but not on Google Maps and thus they can be geocoded using the Nominatim geocoder, but not using the Google Geocoding API - and vice versa.
Geocoding services might require an API key in order to use them. (i.e. you need to register for the service before you can access results from their API). Furthermore, rate limiting also restrict the use of these services. The geocoding process might end up in an error if you are making too many requests in a short time period (eg. trying to geocode DataFrame with large number of rows). See hints for dealing with rate limiting when geocoding pandas Dataframes from the Geopy documentation. Under paid plans, you can naturally make more requests to the API.
In this lesson we will use the Nominatim geocoder for locating a relatively small number of addresses. Usage of the Nominatim geocoding service is rate is rate-limited to 1 request per second (3600 / hour). You can read more about Nominatim usage policy in here
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 As we are only making a small set of queries, we can do the geocoding by using Nominatim.
Note
Always check the terms of service of the geocoding service that you are using!
Note
As noted on the Geopy documentation for the Nominatim geocoder we need to specify a custom user_agent parameter when making requests not to violate the Nominatim Usage Policy.