November 2006 

Summary: Street Address Data Standard (Final Draft) 

The United States Street, Landmark, and Postal Address Data Standard (formerly the Street 

Address Data Standard) is a draft data processing standard for United States address 

information. The draft standard defines and specifies elements and structures for creating and 

organizing address data, defines tests of address data quality, and facilitates address data 

exchange. An address, as defined in the draft standard, specifies a location by reference to a 

thoroughfare or landmark; or it specifies a point of postal delivery. The draft standard has four 

parts: Data Content, Data Classification, Data Quality, and Data Exchange. 

The Data Content part defines the simple and complex data elements that comprise an address, 

and the attributes that describe those elements. Categories of data elements include: address 

number, street name, occupancy, landmark names, place names, and postal delivery points 

such as post office boxes. Attributes describe the address and comprise the record-level 

metadata for addresses. Categories of attributes include address identifiers, geospatial 

coordinate systems and values, address descriptors, address schema, dates of origin and 

retirement, data set, and address authority identifiers. For each element and attribute, XML 

tags and syntaxes are provided. The Data Content part also defines simple and complex 

elements. Simple elements are those defined independently of all other elements. Complex 

elements are combinations of simple or other complex elements. 

The Data Classification part defines address classes by their syntax: the data elements and the 

order in which the elements are arranged. Classifying addresses by syntax rather than 

semantics or meaning allows the users of the standard to focus on record structures, without 

requiring any assumptions about what the address locates. XML tags and syntaxes are given 

for each class. Eleven classes are defined and presented in three groups: 

1. Thoroughfare classes specify a location by reference to a thoroughfare. 

2. Landmark classes specify a location by reference to a named landmark. 

3. Postal classes specify points of postal delivery that have no definite relation to the location 

of the recipient, such as a post office box. 

A 12th class, the general class, can hold addresses of unknown or mixed classes, such as 

general-purpose mailing lists. 

The Data Quality part checks the internal consistency, both tabular and spatial, of address 

elements, attributes, and classes. The tests cover attribute (thematic) accuracy, logical 

consistency, completeness, positional accuracy, and lineage. Each test is named, described, 

categorized, and presented in SQL-based pseudocode.

The Data Exchange part defines an XML schema document (XSD) to provide a template for the 

data and metadata needed for address data exchange. It also provides information on 

preparing data for transmittal (normalizing and packaging) and receipt (unpackaging and 

localizing). Exchange modes are provided for monolithic (complete dataset) exchange and 

transactional (adds and deletes) exchanges. XML is used to make address data exchange 

simpler, more flexible, and more reliable. 

The United States Street, Landmark, and Postal Address Data Standard has been drafted by the 

Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) Address Standard Working 

Group, with support from the National Emergency Number Association and the U.S. Census 

Bureau, for submittal to the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee.