GEOCODING METHOD USING MULTIDIMENSIONAL VECTOR SPACES

摘要

A process for evaluating and geocoding of GIS data elements utilizes a plurality of "locate" tests and a weighting scheme to express the match results as a multidimensional vector. Multiple inputs and data sources, as well as ambiguous and partial input data, are used to generate an output with improved precision b y applying a weighting function to each input element and generating a set of test vector s (i.e., the input data element weighted by the known accuracy of the element/source). A sum of a plurality of tests is then generated as the "characteristic vector" of the test set. By using two (or more) different sets of test, two (or more) characteristic vectors a re formed. Various well-known algebraic techniques can then be used to evaluate the results of each set of tests and select the "best match" result.