Improving an open source geocoding service

Abstract: There are many map providers on the market today. Anyone who wishes to use a licensed map-service in an application has to pay a license fee. This fee can become a big expense and affect the price that the end costumer has to pay.This thesis has investigated in how to set up and improve an open source geocoding service for it to measure against a licensed map-service. Geocoding is the technique of having an input address and returning a position which consists of a latitude and a longitude coordinate. The investigation has been done by implementing an open source solution as a proof of concept with the goal to answer the question to which extent is it feasible to develop an open source geocoding service to be as fast accurate and complete as a licensed map service.The open source solution has been developed in collaboration with TaxiCaller Nordic AB. In the implementation the Pelias project has been used as a geocoder together with map data from the datasets of OpenStreetMap and Who’s On First and Elasticsearch as the search engine. The work is based on functional, data and performance requirements set by TaxiCaller.The evaluation has shown that most of the requirements set for this work are achieved with the implemented open source geocoding service solution. Examples of these requirements are correctness of the search results and that the address, street, venue or intersection in the search results should be fully specified.The functional requirement to convert an intersection to coordinates is not achieved when the intersection can not be uniquely identified. The performance requirement to search for a venue is not. Also, the data requirement that the postal code in the search results should be fully specified is not achieved.Sometimes but not always a licensed map-service can provide better data.