Improvement of building addressing

Why work on addressing problems in a company that deals with risks? Simply because a hazard is only serious if it can have major consequences on human, building, economic, social or other assets. The greatest concentrations of hazards are found in urban areas, so geospatial approaches to risk are essential. The primary objective of fire and rescue services (and, more generally, security forces) is to protect the population, so addressing the problem becomes crucial.

The main reason for local authorities to set up an addressing system is public safety: emergency services need to be able to get to the scene as quickly as possible after an emergency call, and the only information they have is the address communicated at the time of the call. Other economic issues are also important: being able to have a package delivered to your home, fiber connection, having a geocoded address (i.e., one that can be recognized by GPS), etc.

It may not be a big issue in the city, but the results of the federated National Address Base project don’t cover requirements sufficiently. In the countryside, the problem is more obvious on a day-to-day basis, as there are many cases where addresses simply don’t exist (local addressing is only compulsory for towns with more than 2,000 people).

Since its creation, APEX solutions has been working on behalf of the Paris Fire Brigade to merge address data from widely disparate databases (DGFiP, IGN, ETALAB), and to set up quality indicators at plot and building level to associate each address with a reliability level. The problem cannot be solved perfectly, as the very definition of the term “building” differs significantly depending on the database. This work allows firefighters to capitalize on their knowledge of the territory they serve, and to guide regular field surveys in areas where the quality of addressing is lacking.

The tools and processing scripts developed will be extended to the whole of France once they are validated by the BSPP. This data will also be cross-referenced with data from other databases (industrial and commercial activities) to semi-automatically identify additional risks around the intervention address.

On a much more local scale, APEX solutions can help small towns nearby to conduct an addressing process, from the collection of existing data to the surveys that will allow the local authority to name streets and number buildings, ultimately leading to the creation of a Local Address Base.