What's New with the BC Address Geocoder

Check out the Geocoder releases and detailed What's New page.

March 2024

The BC Address Geocoder and Batch Geocoder will be gradually migrated from BC Data Service infrastructure to OpenShift (Silver) starting March 25th, 2024

How will it impact my application?

Your applications and scripts should not be affected by the migration. No outage will be experienced, and you can continue using these services during this time.

What should I do?

If you have any firewall rules in place to access the BC Address Geocoder, please contact us by opening a ticket with the Data Systems and Services request system by March 15th, 2024. You do not necessarily need to have firewall rules updated by March 25th, but connecting with us will help with scheduling.

February 6, 2024

• Improved recognition of addresses containing PO boxes.
• Improved response for cases where no site is found.
• Improved parsing to better handle non-address elements found in an addressString.
• Improved handling of locality qualifiers in locality names.
• Improved error responses for JSON.

May 3, 2022

• BC Address Geocoder version 4.2.0
• Improved recognition of street names and locality names containing missing or extra blank spaces.
• Improved handling of unitNumberSuffix in structured address requests.

October 26, 2021

• BC Address Geocoder version 4.1.1 released.
• A more robust Geocoder start-up process.
• Address data updated to reflect sources available as of July 2021.

February 2, 2021

• BC Address Geocoder version 4.1 released.
• Significant improvements to address match accuracy.
• New Batch Address List Metrics script is available to report on batch geocoding quality.
• Houses and other buildings on Indian Reserves, that are assigned unique civic numbers and no street names, are now able to be geocoded (dependent on data supply).
• Duplicate addresses are no longer returned by Geocoder in autocomplete mode.

See Github repository for more detail.

December 1, 2020

The following URLs were deprecated on Sep. 1, 2018 and are now shut down:

• http://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/geocoder
• https://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/geocoder

This URL should now be used, with or without an API key: https://geocoder.api.gov.bc.ca

July 28, 2020

• BC Address Geocoder version 4.0.2 released.
• Batch Geocoder version 4.0.2 released.
• Improved handling of new road classes.
• Address data updated to reflect sources available as of July 2020.

June 24, 2020

• Batch Geocoder version 4.0.1 released.
• Improved security and performance.
• Support OGC GeoPackage file format (input and/or output).
• In GeoJson format, Spatial Reference Systems (SRS) other than 4326 are deprecated as per the latest geojson specification located at https://tools.ietf.org/pdf/rfc7946.pdf  Future Geocoder releases may remove support for deprecated SRS.

March 31, 2020

• BC Address Geocoder version 4.0* released.
• Backward compatible with version 3.4.2.
• Improved error handling for GeoJSON output.
• Improved security and performance.
• Road network and address data updated to reflect sources available as of March 2020.

* Excluding Batch Geocoder software, which remains at version 3.4.2 pending future update

September 1, 2018

• The following URLs are deprecated, no longer supported and may be shut down in the future:
  • http://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/geocoder
  • https://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/geocoder
• This URL should now be used, with or without an API key: https://geocoder.api.gov.bc.ca
• A rate limit of 1,000 requests per minute now applies to use without an API key.

June 19, 2018

• BC Address Geocoder version 3.4.1 released.
• The BC Digital Road Atlas for May, 2018 has been loaded.
• A bug fixed in the address range generator has resulted in 10% more blocks with addresses.
• Re. geocoder.api.gov.bc.ca/occupants/addresses: 
  • In the fullAddress response parameter, occupant name is now separated from address by two consecutive asterisks as in the following: 
    • Sir James Douglas Elementary ** 401 Moss St, Victoria, BC 
  • If addressString doesn’t contain the occupant separator “**”, addressString will be treated as an occupant name. In previous releases, addressString was treated as an address.

April 24, 2018

• BC Address Geocoder version 3.4 released.
• Electoral Area is a new attribute that is now returned in address results for addresses outside of incorporated areas. For example, 11237 West Coast Rd, Shirley, BC is in the CAPRD Juan de Fuca Electoral Area.
• Township of Langley is now distinguished from City of Langley by the appropriate value in localityDescriptor  (e.g., Township, City).
• District Municipality of North Vancouver is now distinguished from City of North Vancouver by the appropriate value in localityDescriptor (e.g., District Municipality, City).
• A single PID response from parcels/pids is now a string instead of a number.
• Minor bug fixes.

April 20, 2018

• Bug fixed in Address List Editor Export Results feature.

March 13, 2018

• BC Address Geocoder version 3.3 released.
• Updated with January 2018 data.
• Various data improvements.

January 14, 2018

• BC Address Geocoder version 3.2.2 released.
• Improved address auto-complete.
• Added new brief parameter that specifies only a subset of address attributes be returned.
• Improved reverse geocoding to the nearest address access point.
• Road network and address data updated to reflect sources available as of September 2017.

May 11, 2017

• BC Address Geocoder version 3.1.2 released.
• Increased number of physical addresses, including highway addresses.
• New developer tools added, including a location services demo application.

November 8, 2016

• BC Address Geocoder version 3.0.0 released.
• Improved performance: the Online Geocoder is 20% faster and the Batch Geocoder is five times faster.
• Higher availability: load balanced and geo-redundant across two data centres.
• excludeUnits parameter was added.
• Road network and address data updated to reflect sources available as of October 2016.  This update includes 50,000 more address points.
• Improved address range generation.
• Improved handling of highway addresses.
• General improvements and bug fixes.

March 13, 2016

• BC Address Geocoder version 2.0.1 released.
• 1.4 million more addressed sites loaded, for a total of 1.8 million.
• Improved geocoding positional accuracy.
• Improved address ranges.
• Added new site occupants: hospitals, schools, and post-secondary education institutions.
• General improvements and bug fixes.
• Documentation updated.

December 10, 2015

• BC Address Geocoder version 2.0 released.
• Support for occupant searches - you can now search for a limited number of public facilities and related businesses.
• Content Types for JSON and XML requests have been fixed.
• Documentation updated.

September 6, 2015

• BC Address Geocoder version 1.7 released.
• Support for street, locality and province in non-civic addresses.
• Intersection degree added to Intersection Address and Site and Intersection Address records in Geocoder responses.
• Intersection URL removed from Intersection Address.
• Documentation updated.

May 10, 2015

• BC Address Geocoder version 1.6 released.
• Minor improvements and bug fixes.

January 25, 2015

• BC Address Geocoder version 1.5 released.
• In online and batch geocoders, you can now filter result geographically by providing a bounding box or a list of locality names.
• The Address List Editor is improved with support for copy/paste to/from spreadsheets, an export function that preserves your source columns, a show in map function, a cleaner look and feel and much faster geocoding.
• There is a new batch address list submitter script in python that lets you add batch geocoding functionality into your server-side applications.
• In online and batch geocoders, floor numbers are now matched and standardized (e.g., 5th floor becomes FLR 5).
• You can now perform a local search for addresses. The sites/near resource returns site addresses near a given origin point. You can specify how many results to return and they will be sorted in increasing distance from the origin. There is also a new local search resource called intersections/near that returns intersection addresses near a given origin point.
• sites/nearest and intersections/nearest will now find the nearest site or intersection no matter how far away it is. 
• In sites/nearest, intersections/nearest, and sites/within, you can now add a setback to the accessPoint position.
• You can now specify the desired level of address match through a new matchPrecision parameter. For example, if you set matchPrecision=locality, the address 525 Superior St, Victoria, BC will return a match of Victoria, BC but not Superior St, BC or 525 Superior St, BC.
• Documentation has also been updated.

May 12, 2014

• BC Address Geocoder version 1.4 released.
• There is a new autocompleting address finder widget that you can incorporate into your own web apps and web pages.
• 500,000 strata units from BC Assessment have been loaded.
• The February 2014 release of the Digital Road Atlas has been loaded.
• The Geocoder’s parser has been overhauled for much improved performance and smarter matching.
• French input is now recognized and translated.
• Nested sites are now supported and recognized on input with the help of a frontGate delimiter ("--") as in "RM 605, West Wing, Royal Jubilee Hospital --1952 Bay St, Victoria BC.
• Non-civic addresses (e.g., sitename, locality, province) are now supported.
• Partial street and locality names are now matched. For example, 4450 happy rd metchosin bc will be matched to 4450 Happy Valley Rd Metchosin BC.
• Prefix street directionals and street types are now recognized on input and formatted appropriately in fullAddress.
• Accents and punctuation are now allowed in reference addresses.
• The Geocoder now recognizes and matches streetQualifiers (e.g., the Bridge in Johnson St Bridge).
• The Geocoder now matches units (e.g., the 104 in 104-525 Superior St Victoria BC). In v1.3, units were recognized but not matched.
• Cross Origin Scripting (CORS) is now supported.
• A new document entitled Understanding Geocoder Output has been published and all existing documents have been updated.

July 31, 2013

• BC Address Geocoder version 1.2 released.
• Geocoder URL and API have been changed to support improved long term use.
• New Address List Editor tool available.
• Significant improvements to Geocoder address matching and locating accuracy.
• Reverse geocoding functions are now available.
• Unit designators are now recognized for more complete address validation.
• Address locations in KML output are styled to reflect location type and positional accuracy.
• New documentation, including: Guide to Preparing Address Lists for Geocoding, REST API Guide for Developers, Javascript API Guide for Developers, expanded Glossary.
• General improvements and bug fixes

January 25, 2013

• BC Address Geocoder v1.0 released (under name of Physical Address Geocoder)