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Sign up. Password recovery. Recover your password. Get help. Charlotte Stories. Internet breakthroughs: Twitter Spaces, Omegle, Caffeine. Postal service in Canada has been around for a long time. Benjamin Franklin established the first regular postal service in the British colonies in , between Falmouth, England, and New York on a monthly basis.
The Canadian zip codes that we know it today were implemented to improve the quality of postal service in Canada. Canadian zip codes are composed of two distinct parts, which allow you to know where the mail should be delivered.
The first letter in the first half refers to a major province or district; only Ontario and Quebec, the two largest provinces in Canada, have more than one district. The digit that comes after is the territory: 0 represents a rural location, and other other number denotes an urban location.
Generally, the uses of the postal code products can be characterized as follows:. Statistical unit A statistical unit is the unit of observation or measurement for which data are collected or derived. The basic statistical unit for social statistics is the person, which is the unit of analysis for most social statistics programs.
Other units used in social statistics include the dwelling and the household. The PCCF provides the linkage between the postal code and most standard geographic areas including the detailed entities: block-face, dissemination block and dissemination area. The PCCF is the primary product that meets the demands of the above-mentioned applications.
Over the years there have been a number of issues related to PCCF quality which have led to the questioning of the fundamental concepts underlying how the postal codes are linked to standard geographic areas. These include issues such as the appropriate use of data in linking postal codes, the precision and accuracy of the linkages and the assignment of single link indicators. Investigations of these PCCF quality issues have increased the already high cost, to Statistics Canada, of geocoding postal codes.
These issues have highlighted a need to review and establish a conceptual framework articulating the relationship between postal codes and standard geographic areas in order to re-establish the business rules for linking postal codes to standard geographic areas and subsequent product development. The premise of this working paper is that better use of the postal code information collected in the census as well as better use of the information in CPC files can address the issues described above as well as lead to more precise links between postal codes and standard geographic areas.
In order to improve the linkage, rules need to be developed to geocode postal codes to Statistics Canada's standard geographic areas. Geocoding can be defined as the process of assigning geographic identifiers codes to map features and data records. The resulting geocodes permit data to be linked geographically. For example, one way to geocode a civic address in Canada would be to start by locating the general area and then "zero-in" to the specific building with that civic address.
Since the same street name or street address number may be used in many parts of Canada, being able to limit the searching for a street name and street address number combination to a particular place within Canada is essential. The term " search area " will be used in this paper to denote the geographic area within which the geocoding can be done using road names and civic addresses. The geocoding process for civic addresses can be described as follows:. The geocoding process described above is the general model that will be used to establish business rules for geocoding postal codes.
The geocoding process for postal codes ultimately creates the link between the postal codes and the geocodes of block-face, dissemination block and dissemination area. The link between postal codes and all other standard geographic areas is based on this initial geocoding.
The expectation is that the geocoding rules and recommendations for quality indicators can be used to create the products. Examining the structure and typology of the postal codes is the first step in understanding how postal codes can be associated with standard geographic areas. Some of the pertinent definitions as well as the types and occurrences are examined in this section. This provides the basis for the business rules for geocoding postal codes see section 3.
The postal code is maintained by the CPC. It was designed to help sort mail rapidly and make more efficient the delivery of letters, parcels and other mail by CPC. A postal code may be linked to different types of points of delivery including residential mail boxes, super boxes as well as post office mail boxes.
See www. The characters that form the postal code are generally representative of the intended service delivery of the postal code. Canada Post defines a postal code as follows:. The postal code is an integral part of every postal address in Canada and is required for the mechanised processing of mail.
Postal Codes are also used to identify the various CPC processing facilities and delivery installations Canada Post Corporation, a, p. This is defined as follows:. The forward sortation area FSA represents a specific area within a major geographic region or province. The forward sortation area provides the basis for the primary sorting or forward mail Canada Post Corporation, , Section B, Chapter 3, p.
These allow for the creation of individual postal codes serviced by postal installations within the FSA. However, people living in one province may access mail using a postal code associated with another province, and similarly people living in one FSA may use the postal code of another FSA. This means that the area serviced by the postal code or the FSA may be different from the administrative boundary created by Canada Post.
Further to this, the scale of these maps , to ,, makes the FSA boundaries difficult to relate to the more detailed road network in Statistics Canada's Geographic Frame. While these maps are useful in orienting the FSA within the province they neither provide the extent of the FSA with reference to a publicly available road network nor the more detailed information needed for geocoding the postal code.
However, they do not delineate the area serviced by a postal code. The postal code by itself is not sufficient to obtain the exact location and coverage of the service area of the postal code. The FSA can be used to locate the general area serviced by most but not all of the associated postal codes. More information from other sources is needed for associating the postal code with specific standard geographic areas. CPC provides information on the postal codes in terms of the different aspects of mail delivery.
This is relevant to how these postal codes map geographically and how they are accessed by the people and institutions that use the mail system. The typologies and location information described here are derived from data provided on a monthly basis by CPC to Statistics Canada in the following files:. These are the three most relevant files associated with the geocoding of postal codes.
Of these the Address Lookup file, containing the address information associated with the vast majority of the postal codes, is the most useful for geocoding.
The Address Lookup File shows the complete picture in terms of active postal codes including updates and about to new postal codes introduced or "birthed" each month.
Of the 1,, records in the June Address Lookup file, 1,, were "active" or valid for mailing. The other postal codes in the file are those that are "retired" that month. Statistics Canada uses the term "retired postal code" to describe all postal codes that were active at some time but, are no longer active. Although Canada Post only considers the active postal codes as valid for mailing, retired postal codes may be used for some time after they are retired.
Identification of the municipality serviced by a postal code is an important initial step in "zeroing in" on where the postal code should be geocoded. The 1 st character of the postal code indicating the province or territory in combination with the CPC community name does in some but not all cases point to the current municipality or census subdivision CSD to which the postal code can be geocoded.
When the CSD can be located, civic address information could be used to geocode to a street address range. The term "municipality" as in the Address Lookup File does not necessarily constitute the legally defined municipality at the time when Canada Post publishes its data.
These names serve the purpose of preserving locally used names to prevent confusion in terms of the area serviced. The area serviced does not necessarily coincide with legally constituted municipalities of the same or similar name. For example, when municipalities are amalgamated, Canada Post preserves the older non-amalgamated names until it can establish that different streets are uniquely named in the newly amalgamated municipality.
The FSA is also defined in relation to a municipality as follows:. The FSA comprises the first three characters of a postal code. The FSA qualifies the area within a municipality that is permitted to use the valid alternate municipality name Canada Post Corporation, a, p These municipality names are often names of places no longer in existence or commonly used names associated with localities.
To avoid confusion this name will be referred to hereafter as the " CPC community". Comparison of municipal names in use in January illustrates this point. Statistics Canada's CSDs contain all the legally defined municipalities existing on January 1 st of the census year Examination of the June Address Lookup File shows changes occurring as a result of amalgamation.
For example, both Nepean and Ottawa are maintained as CPC community names although Nepean no longer exists as a legal municipality as a result of amalgamation. The street names and the CPC community names appear to be updated in the Address Lookup File to reflect the changes at the municipal level once CPC resolves the uniqueness of the address. This may explain the slight increase in match rates over four years.
However, for geocoding purposes, a correspondence file between CSDs and the CPC communitynames is needed so that the geocoding can be narrowed down to the CSD first and then to the street address within it. Unfortunately even where the CSD names match, more information is needed to define the area within which the street address information can be uniquely matched. More than one street can occasionally have the same name within a CSD.
The same postal code may sometimes be assigned to multiple CSDs. The possibility of geocoding within multiple CPC community should be considered when geocoding. The CPC community name can be a useful tool in "zeroing in" to the municipalities within which the street address may be found. Sometimes a correspondence can be established between the CSD and the CPC community name based on province and the similarity of the name. But, because of the differences in vintage and purpose of the CSD name and the CPC community name, this correspondence is not always possible and even when established can not be done with absolute confidence.
Supplementary information is needed in establishing the area within which the street address may be found. Once the municipality or general area serviced by the postal code is established, the specific service area of the postal code needs to be understood before geocoding.
The record types in the Address Lookup File are essential in establishing the type of service area for the postal code. The typology is as follows: 9. A postal code can be associated with more than one PCType.
Figure 1 shows that the vast majority of the records are of PCType 1 or The service areas of records with PCType of 1 and 2 are defined in terms of civic addresses. Basically civic street addresses are those that are found on dwellings or buildings. Most urban block-faces and many residential streets in urban areas typically have only one civic addressed postal code associated with them.
While there may be difficulties in finding the CPC community and locating the standard geographic area s for a postal code, the service areas of these postal codes can be considered as completely defined by the address information provided by Canada Post.
Here, geocoding is a simple matter if the road name and address information can be matched to the same vintage data in Statistics Canada's Geographic Frame. With increased urbanisation and civic addressing, the proportion of PCType 2 postal codes has increased slightly. Table 2 illustrates the changes over time:. While the percentage of each type of urban postal codes has remained consistent, the percentage of postal codes that include PCType 2 has had a small increase in rural delivery areas.
This slight gain in the proportion of postal codes with civic address range records could lead to a slight increase in the proportion of postal codes that can be geocoded to a civic address range. As can be seen, a postal code could have records associated with more than one PCType. This generally occurs in the areas that Canada Post considers to be "rural". The proportion of postal codes that have PCType 2 records continues to increase.
This may be an indication of an increase in civic addressing particularly where there has been route service PCType 4. However, it also has records of PCType 2 with civic addresses associated with it.
An example of this type of situation is the postal code K1A 9Z6. The civic address record PCType 1 is used to supplement the information in the record with the delivery installation address PCType 3 for the same postal code. The service area of a postal code can be considered to be the area where persons live and have access to mail for that postal code. For postal codes of PCType 1 and 2 that would include the dwellings and buildings with mail delivery based on their civic addresses.
For postal codes with PCType 4, all of the areas that receive mail by route service would be included. For postal codes with PCType 3 and 5 that would encompass the locations of dwellings and buildings where persons typically access mail delivery through the associated delivery installation. The service area of an individual postal code would include that of each of its PCTypes. Examination of the PCType combinations associated with each postal code can help in understanding if and how the coverage, of theseservice areas,overlaps.
This in turn can also help in deciding whether certain records are more representative of the geographic footprint of the postal code. Some PCTypes may be considered as more representative of the definitive service area for that postal code. PCType 4 is representative of specific routes serviced whereas PCType 5 is not based on the address information available associated with one particular location more than any other within the CPC community.
As discussed earlier in this section, where PCType 1 and 3 occur for the same postal code, the PCType 1 record shows the address of the users of the mail service. All of this suggests that the most representative records of the postal code's coverage would be as follows:. Both PCTypes 2 and 4 may cover the same area. The area serviced by the route service PCType 4 may be quite specific even if it can not be located based on the address information from the Address Lookup File.
This information is not sufficient to decide which of these records PCType 2 or 4 is most representative. However, PCType 2 may be given precedence over PCType 4 in the geocoding process as being more representative since it is likely to be better geocoded given specific address information and also likely represents a part of the coverage of PCType 4 as a result of the progress in civic addressing. Essentially, when more than one PCType is associated with a postal code, the PCType may be used as one of the criteria to choose the most representative indicator for the spatial footprint of that postal code.
Once the CPC community has been matched to a CSD , PCTypes 1 and 2 could be geocoded based on street address information, but, the lack of civic addressing information with PCTypes 3, 4 and 5 makes them almost impossible to geocode below the CSD level in the same way.
Given that the target is to map the entire footprint of the postal code, more information is needed where postal codes have PCTypes 3, 4 and 5 records. The PCTypes can also be used as one factor in determining the most representative linkage of postal code to standard geographic area.
To conclude, PCType is critical to determining the nature of the service area footprint of the postal code. Even a postal code that maps specifically to civic address ranges may cover more than one block-face or block. Therefore when a postal code on the Address Lookup File has more than one record associated with it, each with its own address range, this can legitimately lead to the coverage of more than one block-face or dissemination block.
This can also happen if a single address range from the Address Lookup File spans more than one block-face or dissemination block. In our experience in geocoding of PCType 1 and 2, the coverage is of consecutive or adjacent block-faces when a postal code has more than one civic address range record. PCType 2 appears to have the most number of defined address ranges associated with it.
PCType 4 has routes associated with it and these routes may cover large areas even if there are not that many records in the Address Lookup File. PCType 3 is generally associated with one or more post offices boxes in a postal delivery installation and has only one record associated with the installation.
Similarly PCType 5 refers to delivery that is available from an installation and may have only one record. Of significance here is that for PCType 1 and especially PCType 2 there may not be one single geocoded record block-face or block that is more representative of the postal code in terms of service provided than any other.
PCType 3 and PCType 5 postal codes are associated with the pick-up of mail from a postal delivery installation rather than delivery to a civic address. The civic addresses associated with the postal delivery installation are available on the Householder File. The point locations for these postal delivery installations were also recently acquired from CPC by Statistics Canada.
The point locations are not always consistent with the coordinates of Statistics Canada's Road Network File. This means that where address information is available and can be matched to that in the Road Network File, the geocoding is best done with it so that the position of the installation relative to the road network information is shown as accurately as possible.
When address information is not available, the post office location address can be confirmed with Canada Post. Statistics Canada could maintain a list of postal delivery installation addresses and associated dissemination blocks to permit the geocoding of postal codes. Section 2. The delivery mode type DMT provides detail on the mail delivery service for urban delivery areas.
Canada Post Corporation, c, p. The CPC description and typology is as follows:. The delivery mode type can be useful in illustrating whether the geocoding applies to specific building and thus may potentially be "sub" block-face. As shown in Table 4, in a few cases postal code records can be associated with a specific building:. Most of the geocoding of PCType 1 can be done simply based on the address information. However, it is especially important that buildings with large populations are geocoded properly.
For example, a building may represent a health facility that defines an entire block, dissemination area or census subdivision CSD. In the rare case where an entire CSD is represented by the facility, its population could represent all of the CSD's population. For PCType 1 postal codes, the DMT helps to distinguish the type of building dwelling, apartment, large volume receiver, etc. The DMT does not add more information than the PCType for locating postal codes based on address information, although it does about the nature of the building s receiving the mail.
These considerations for geocoding follow from the examination of the CPC data as elaborated in this section. These considerations, in conjunction with the findings in the next section on how postal codes are used and reported, will be used to develop the rules for geocoding. In conclusion, supplementary information on the areas where postal code service is received is needed to both augment and validate the partial geocoding that can be done based on the CPC files alone.
After examining the postal code data in the previous section, the key challenge remains: how to develop a search area where the postal code can be geocoded. In the previous section, the discussion on the use of the CPC files for geocoding showed that supplementary information was needed for geocoding. The substantive un-answered questions were:. The supplementary information being considered here is information based on the reported use of the postal code.
The area where a postal code is used is referred to as the service area of the postal code. The service areas , based on the postal code reported in the Census of Population, provide the supplementary information to both enable and confirm the geocoding.
Improvements to this process are discussed in Appendix C. This section focuses on how persons or households use postal codes and how this provides supplementary and confirmatory information to that of the address information from CPC.
The users of the postal code are persons and businesses. But, the relationship between these statistical units and the postal codes is indirect. As discussed in the previous section, postal codes are not assigned to persons or businesses but, to buildings and dwellings.
A data source is also needed for finding the service area in this manner. In the case of persons the relationships needed from the data source are as follows:. Essentially the person's relationship with the postal code and the standard geographic area can be used to make the connection between the latter two. Even if such a data source is available for the postal code, the question remains as to which standard geographic area is related to that postal code.
For example, there is a very slight risk that the standard geographic area assigned in the data source not being that of the person's home but that associated with the standard geographic area of employment. These risks need to be balanced in the context of how persons use postal codes and how businesses use postal codes. The one source containing a reported postal code and the standard geographic area for persons in the entirety of Canada is the Census of Population.
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