hile, GPS geeks! to me!

[topaz]

At work we are exploring the possibility of using reverse geocoding to identify a VoIP user's location for 911 calls: we get their GPS coordinates, look them up in a GIS server and figure out which street address they're at.

There are a few sites which allow reverse geocoding lookups over the Web, mostly on a free-trial basis for evaluating someone's pricey GIS server software. I'm using these to determine how accurately we can get a user's fix. For that, I need data. And that, dear reader and owner of a handheld GPS device, is where you come in.

I need to collect a bunch of street addresses and the latitude/longitude that a GPS receiver reports at each of those locations. On this side I can do the reverse lookup and see how closely it matches your actual address. The more far-flung the locations, the better, as long as they're in the 50 U.S. states. (I'm not sure if we're required to provide 911 service in Puerto Rico or Guam.) I will be happy to tell you the results I get, if that makes it more appealing. :-)

If you'd like to help, please feel free either to post the results here or mail them to twp@rnktel.com, whatever you prefer :-)

Comments

[rwx.livejournal.com]

say i'm standing in the middle of a park when i gps (wireless access), what address would i report then? do you care whether we're near potential wireline or not?

--Corprew

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is strictly for wireline services. The idea is that if you buy VoIP service from us, and then move across town or take the phone with you on vacation, and plug it in at your new house, we want to see if we can figure out your address automatically for submitting to the ALI. Which means our primary concern is getting street addresses right.

If you've done something cracked like plugging in your phone to a wireless hub at Burning Man, we won't be able to get anything useful to tell the 911 operator anyway (and I'm sure they'd really love to see "BLACK ROCK CITY" on their terminal).