Table 3 Geocoding system flexibility metrics

User-defined reference data layers (Y/N)

Does the user have the ability to include his/her own custom reference data layers? Example – including one’s own parcel layer for a locality if it is available.

Specialized address parsing rules (Y/N)

Does the user have the ability to include his/her own custom address parsing rules? Example – including a parsing approach where the “St.” in “St. Patrick” is converted to “Saint” to provide higher match rates given a reference data source that has the term listed as “Saint”.

Specialized matching algorithms (Y/N)

Does the user have the ability to include his/her own custom matching rules? Example – Inspecting nearby postal codes for similarly named streets and providing a higher matching score for candidate match features that are found in adjacent postal codes and lower match scored for candidate match features found in non-adjacent postal codes.

Specialized feature selection hierarchies (Y/N)

Does the user have the ability to include his/her own custom ordering of reference layers? Example – Adding the ability to search first in postal codes then in municipalities in urban regions (where postal codes are small and municipalities are big) and municipalities first then postal codes in rural regions (where municipalities are small and postal codes are large).