Geocoding services offline and online

Question

Currently I'm searching for a geocoding service which I can use on different project. When a project starts we get a list of addresses from our clients and the first thing we need to do is to gelocate them. In the past we have used mappoint to get the most of them correct, around 85%, after this, we use online services to determine the rest (these are dataset of 30k entries).

• Offcourse I looked to google maps but this service can only be used when the found lat/lng are used in google maps.
• Open street maps does not support housenumbers (Belgium, the Netherlands).
• Mapquest has an ok api, but the first results I have tested return a bogus result.
• The data scienentist toolkit also returned a result, but the results were not accurate (1 precision digit)
• openaddresses.org is not responding...
• cloudmade does not return correct addresses in belgium/netherlands

We do have a ms mappoint licence but this is only addressable via vba and we are working with Java. Could you point out directions I still have to explore to build a durable geocoding solution.

Answer 1

It appears that Deutsche Post offers address correction services for Belgium and the Netherlands.

The formatting and structuring of your address data is an important factor in achieving the best results when it comes to data maintenance, such as modification, updating, and correction.

A Dutch consumer address is structured as follows:

De heer Jan Voogt
Overtoom 74
9203 PA Drachten 

A Dutch company address is structured as follows:

Musterfirma Holding B.V.
Postbus 102
3890 AN Zeewolde

The address standardisation and cleansing process allows for the correct breakdown of an address into name, street, house number, postcode and area, as well as the correct allocation of postcodes and districts. Any incorrectly written names of streets and districts (which can often occur as a result of multilingualism) are also standardised.