Multiple Address Verification System for Delivery Routing
The present disclosure pertains to collecting various different ways of designating a destination address or physical location (Source Databases A,B,C), and associating them to a single, canonical form (Canonical Database, FIG. 2 ). The canonical form can be conveniently used to route an item for delivery (process FIG. 3 ). The present disclosure solved the problem where there is either no “proper” address or there are a plurality of them (e.g. different addresses for the same house) (FIG. 1 ). Preferably, a meta-database (FIG. 5 ) links across the multiple source databases (A,B,C) and logically connects their contents to the canonical address database, wherein each delivery location has a single associated canonical address designator ( 532 ), and each address designator in each source database ( 536, 538 ) that refers to that delivery point is linked by the meta-database to that associated canonical designator.
1 . A computer-implemented method for multiple address verification, comprising:
collecting address designators from a plurality of data supplier source databases, the address designators each describing a physical location of a dwelling or building;
for each collected address designator, acquiring an associated linker data item from the corresponding data supplier source database;
for each acquired linker data item, determining a canonical address designator that corresponds to the linker data item; and
building a meta-database including the steps of—
creating an entry in the meta-database for each of acquired linker data items;
in the meta-database, associating each linker data item entry with the corresponding canonical address designator; and
in the meta-database, extending each entry to include all of the address designators in the source databases that are associated to the linker data item in that entry.
2 . The method of claim 1 and further comprising, in the meta-database, tagging each of the address designators with an identifier of the source database from which the address designator was collected.
3 . The method of claim 2 and further including updating the meta-database by following at least one of the address designator identifier tags back to the source database to acquire updated data from the source database.
4 . The method of claim 1 wherein each linker data item comprises a latitude and longitude of the physical location described by associated address designator,
5 . The method of claim 1 wherein each linker data item comprises a geocode of the physical location described by associated address designator.
6 . A method of building an electronic database directory system for mail delivery comprising the steps of:
collecting address designators from a plurality of data supplier source databases, the address designators each describing a delivery location in a selected urban area;
accessing a database of canonical address designators for substantially all delivery location in the selected urban area; and
creating a meta-database that links the individual source databases and connects their contents to the canonical address database wherein each delivery location has a single associated canonical address designator, and each address designator in each source database that refers to that delivery point is linked by the meta-database to that associated canonical designator.
7 . The method of claim 6 including retrieving an associated linking data item from the source databases, for each collected address designator; and assigning a canonical form of delivery point designator to each collected address designator based on the associated linking data item.