Smarty unveils high-accuracy QGIS geocoding plugin

June 22, 2022

Smarty unveils unmatched QGIS geocoding accuracy with release of geocoding plugin - US address

PROVO, UT - June 21, 2022 - Smarty, a leader in location data intelligence, announces today the release of their QGIS Geocoding Plugin for US Addresses to provide an easy way for users of the popular GIS software platform to validate, standardize, and convert addresses to their latitude and longitude coordinates (geocodes). The plugin allows manual address entry as well as batch geocoding via CSV.

Millions of people worldwide use QGIS to map, visualize, and share geographic information. As such many GIS professionals will benefit from the new, free geocoding plugin. No subscription is required. Users need only to have the free QGIS software installed in order to use the plugin.

“Smarty’s US Rooftop Geocoding engine provides the highest resolution geocodes available on QGIS. Other geocoding plugins on QGIS are struggling to hit the right parcel or block for a geocode, but Smarty features a 95% match rate with the actual rooftop and parcel,” explained Berk Charlton, Chief Product Officer. “The plugin goes even further with subaddress geocoding that can match secondary addresses like apartment units and office suite rooftops in building complexes.”

In addition to geocodes, the free plugin also includes supplemental metadata in the output that can be useful for many GIS purposes. Output fields include parsed address components, ZIP+4 Code, precision match level, county name and FIPS Code, congressional district, time zone with Daylight Savings Indicator, and whether the address is residential or commercial.

“The plugin is designed to provide the fastest, easiest user experience by leveraging the Smarty US Address Autocomplete Pro API, and US Street API” continued Charlton. “Valid addresses are automatically suggested as you type to allow for simple selection of the correct address. After the address has been selected or entered, the plugin validates that the address is real, standardizes it to the USPS format, outputs the geocode and plots it on your map. There’s no copying, pasting, or switching between different utilities necessary.”

Subscribing to a US Rooftop Geocoding license unlocks the batch lookup feature in Smarty’s QGIS Plugin. With no file size limit, speeds of 600-700 records/sec are possible. 1,000,000 geocodes can easily be processed in 27 minutes. Enterprise customers needing higher speeds can bypass QGIS and connect with Smarty’s API directly, where speeds of 100,000+ geocodes/sec are available, and a 1 million address file takes 10 seconds instead of 27 minutes.