Geocoded Address List
Detailed information on the GAL is available in McKinney, et. al., 2008 and Abowd, et. al. 2005.
The Geocoded Address List connects commercial and residential addresses to Census geocodes (down to the tract and block level) and latitude and longitude coordinates. Currently, addresses are drawn from:
- LEHD source files for business data (ES-202)
- The Census Bureau’s Business Register (SSEL)
- Census’s Master Address File
- The American Community Survey Place-of-Work Files
- The American Housing Survey.
Because of the detail of geographic information in the GAL, it can be used to accurately connect Census data to external data.
The final output of the geocoding process is an address list and a crosswalk for each source file by year. The address list contains:
- Unduplicated addresses and geocodes
- Flags for the source file and year in which each address appears
- Information on data quality and data processing. (For instance, longitude and latitude coordinates are rated for accuracy on a scale of 1-9, and quality flags reflecting these accuracy scores are added to the GAL.)
- Several extra variables, including ‘occupant type,’ indicating whether the building is residential, commercial, or mixed-use.
