Street Addressing Working Group
and the
National Street Addressing Standard
In 1999, the Street Addressing Working Group of the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM) undertook a review of existing Standards and Guidelines relating to addressing. ICSM agreed that a comprehensive addressing Standard needed to be developed to meet current and future needs of Australian and New Zealand users. The Street Address Working Group led the creation of this standard with support from Standards Australia.
Several draft standards were developed and tested. In 2003 the final version of the Rural and Urban Addressing Standard (AS/NZS 4819:2003) was released. This can be purchased through Standards Australia or Standards New Zealand.
In May 2005, at its biannual meeting, ICSM members agreed to disband the Street Addressing Working Group as the Standard had been broadly adopted within Australia and New Zealand.
About the Standard
A primary aim of the standard is to ensure the provision of unique, and consistent addresses to assist in reaching a desired destination. Described below are the six main sections of the Standard:
- Rural Addressing
This section of the Standard provides guidelines for a rural addressing system for roads of all classifications found outside urban areas. The system adopts a distance based approach to assigning address numbers. That is, numbers are assigned based on the distance from a point of origin to the entrance of a rural property.
- Urban Addressing
This section of the Standard provides guidelines for an urban addressing system (eg. consecutive odd numbers on left, evens on right).
- Complex Site Addressing
Complex address sites have the characteristic of having a single address for a site while concurrently containing individual address sites. For example shopping complexes, retirement villages and universities.
- Alias Address Management
Alias addresses are alternative or secondary addresses for an address site. The Standard recognises the importance of alias addresses in providing a useful guide when locating an address site. The Standard only validates the use of an alias name when used in conjunction with the principle address.
- Geocoding
A geocode describes the coordinates that define the position of an address point. The Standard encompasses geocoding for a variety of address sites defined within the Standard. It caters for the needs of a variety of users, with a particular focus on the needs of emergency and other essential service providers.
- Management and Transfer of Temporal Address Information
Transfer of address information is very important between Government agencies and large organisations. The Standard provides a framework for the transfer of this information. The framework requires that not only the change of address be recorded but also the dates when the changes were made. This allows organisations to retain addresses that no longer physically exist but need to be retained for administrative and historical purposes.
[ Top ]
Benefits of the Standard
- Provides users with a single easy-to-use reference source that contains information on all aspects of addressing.
- Caters for the future development of a Geocoded National Address File (G-NAF).
- Facilitates future amendments to addressing systems.
- Improved provision of services for Governments, Emergency Services, Commercial Interests, the Information Industry and the Community who use street addresses.
[ Top ]
Developing the Standard
The following organisations were involved in developing the Standard:
- Dept of Land Administration - WA
- Dept of Natural Resources & Mines - QLD
- Dept of Sustainability & Environment - VIC
- Dept for Environment & Heritage - SA
- ACT Planning and Land Authority- ACT
- Dept of Lands - NSW
- Dept of Primary Industries, Water & Environment - TAS
- Land Information New Zealand
- Australian Bureau of Statistics
- PSMA Australia Ltd
- Electoral Council of Australia
- Australian Electoral Commission
- Australia Post
- Telstra
- Local Government
[ Top ]
|
