How to choose a geocoding package

[maelle]

I might be asking this because of my own package but I wonder how one could help users choose a geocoding package.

There are these other geocoding packages https://github.com/ropensci/opendata#geocoding and the ones described in the geocoding section of this other CRAN task view

Maybe we should collaborate on creating a sort of short summary including options of the service/package (reverse geocoding / only forward geocoding), data sources used by the service, number of calls included in the free tier, prices, geographical coverage, age of the service (or something indicating the trust one has in the service being stable/available for a long time)? :-)

[hrbrmstr]

(a) great idea!
(b) def at least a blog post
(c) perhaps an R Journal article? ;-)
(d) i'll poke at what gis/geocoding conferences are coming up across the globe and see if we can weave this into something us or other rOpenSci folks cld present at them

[hrbrmstr]

I shld prbly note that I made this pretty much b/c it was (apparently) the talk of the town at NICAR — https://www.ire.org/nicar/ — this past weekend and that it had a super-easy API to wrap with decent free limits :-)

[maelle]

Cool, thanks for your enthusiasm!

I also wonder how to measure the "performance" of all these different geocoding services which would be an important aspect but seems harder to define. 🤔

[hrbrmstr]

at a minimum we compare the accuracy. not all of them return confidence scores, so that's another one. speed and availability of the API services, too.

[maelle]

Good points! I won't have time to do anything today but I can create a Github repo for us to list packages & criteria if you want?

[hrbrmstr]

aye, time is short for me until ~thurday this week (meetings in Boston). a repo wld be ++gd #ty

…

On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 8:09 AM, Maëlle Salmon ***@***.***> wrote: Good points! I won't have time to do anything today but I can create a Github repo for us to list packages & criteria if you want? — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAfHtpI-MpVkpZp2Y9WPb2DsI9wnk8ZVks5rjAVvgaJpZM4MT4CF> .

[maelle]

Done https://github.com/masalmon/decoding_geocoding and content of our discussion copied in different issues. 👼 I invited you as a collaborator. Let's talk again when you're no longer in meetings :-)