Cognised existence: An address is a structured spatial identifier that connects a human activity — dwelling, business, service — to a point in geographic space. It is a universal join key in many geospatial data ecosystems.
Question: Where is a property located by its official address?
What is an Address?
An address is not a coordinate. It is a layered set of identifiers (street name, house number, floor, door) that can collapse to one or more coordinate representations depending on purpose. In most data ecosystems, many registries reference addresses. Understanding the join chain from address entities to geometry is fundamental.
Realisations
Instead of hardcoding implementation schemas here, SPHERE separates semantic meaning from dataset implementation. See the following realisations for how to access this data:
- DAR Realisation: The authoritative Danish register. Uses IDs as foreign keys across the Grunddatamodellen (CVR, BBR). Provides full history and explicit entry points (adgangspunkt) and road network snapping (vejpunkt).
- OSM Realisation: Global coverage, trails official data with slight delays. Geometry is accessed directly on points/polygons without complex join chains, but lacks dwelling-level precision (door/floor).