October 2021
With our AddressBase portfolio adopting GeoPackage, you'll find a number of benefits from a highly detailed addressing dataset supplied in a simple data file:
- Access AddressBase Premium in one single file. It’s easy to transfer and if you’re importing data you no longer need to carry out lengthy post-processing to manipulate the data before it can be used.
- The file size limit is very large (140TB), meaning it can accommodate lots of data in one place. You don’t need to combine multiple files anymore.
- You can import the AddressBase Premium GeoPackage file straight into a geographic information system, while retaining the related non-spatial data tables.
- The GeoPackage format is universal – used by numerous software applications – which means our addressing data can be used across various systems. You can be confident knowing users will see and view the data in the exact same way.
What is GeoPackage?
GeoPackage (.gpkg) is an open, non-proprietary, platform-independent and standards-based data format for geographic information systems (or GIS). It’s defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium and was curated about seven years ago to provide a lightweight format that’s accessible to all. It can contain large amounts of varied and complex data in a single file, and is easy to distribute and use when transferring geospatial information.
How can I use AddressBase Premium’s GeoPackage to better my targeted marketing?
Let’s take an example of a start-up marketing organisation who organises and carries out door-to-door national marketing activities on behalf of their clients. They specialise in targeted campaigns so require certain features of AddressBase Premium, but as they’re newly starting out, they have constrained budgets for anything more than just the data and a geographic information system to manage.
The start-up has specific requirements to resolve. Let’s looks at the requirements and how AddressBase Premium data in GeoPackage format helps meet each need:
Example requirement 1: We only have a small number of employees, with limited resource to dedicate to data processing.
How GeoPackage can help: This resource limited scenario is not a barrier to using AddressBase Premium now that it’s available as an Open Government Consortium GeoPackage. With this new format, you won’t need to allocate resource to process the data from its raw format. This ‘plug and play’ approach makes life simpler for your organisation and frees up resource for your employees to use the data in more innovative ways.
Example requirement 2: We need to share our addressing data across our office locations which use a geographic information system.
How GeoPackage can help: With the Open Government Consortium GeoPackage format being universal in nature, this allows your organisation to share the same dataset with other office locations which may be using different types of geographic information systems. Your organisation can be confident that the data integrity is not compromised as the addressing data is shared. The format is built on standards and each type of geographic information system must interpret these standards in the same manner.
Example requirement 3: A client wants to market promotional material to a specific industry on a national scale.
How GeoPackage can help: As the client wants to focus the material on a specific industry, they can make use of the tertiary and quaternary-level property classification codes within the AddressBase Premium product. Using the supplementary codes list, you can discuss with your client which code is relevant to them, and then apply this as a filter to the product in its entirety to provide addresses nationally that match the criteria.
Example requirement 4: A client wants to plan and allocate budget for promotion in the nearby local area where they’re currently building a housing estate.
How GeoPackage can help: Helpfully, the AddressBase Premium product contains information relating to the full life cycle of an address. This means the user has access to new build information and can utilise this to provide the client with a list of addresses that are currently in build as part of a housing estate. Taking this further, addresses can then be tracked over time so that when they become active, the client can be notified and can begin planning the marketing promotion stage.
How to start using AddressBase Premium GeoPackage format
For more information on how to get started with using the new Open Government Consortium GeoPackage format for AddressBase Premium, check out our AddressBase Premium product support page and getting started with GeoPackage guide (PDF).