Calculate the distance between addresses

[George_Fischetti]

Hi all,

I'm new to Alteryx and this is my first post in the community, looking forward to engaging with such talented individuals!!

My issues are as follows:

• I'd like to calculate the distance (in miles) between two addresses.   
• I do not have the Geospatial license and also do not have latitude/longitude.   I'm limited to Address 1, City, State, Zip.   
• I'm not certain that my company allows 3rd party API's. 

Do I have any alternatives?  Can I use the tools in the basic Designer to accomplish this task?  

Appreciate any input.

Thanks!

George

[apathetichell]

Spatial distance functions will only work with lat/long/spatial objects. If it's a small amounts perhaps get the lats and longs manually (ie google) and then run the process? Otherwise - I do not believe this is readily doable hence why companies make money with spatial analytics/geocoding packages.

[George_Fischetti]

I was actually afraid this would be the answer....thank you for your input!!

[apathetichell]

Depending upon your R skills - you could try something like this discussed here:

https://towardsdatascience.com/breaking-down-geocoding-in-r-a-complete-guide-1d0f8acd0d4b

or try Geopy  via the python tool.

[Ben_H]

Hi @George_Fischetti,

This is an interesting question - in the UK it's quite easy to build your own geocoder as the UK Post Office publishes an "PAF" file every year giving address data with Lat/Longs included.

It made me wonder if there isn't a US equivalent

I came across the Dept. of Transport National Address Database. https://www.transportation.gov/gis/national-address-database/national-address-database-0

It's apparantly not complete yet but it should give you something usable to start from if your state is covered.

Regards,

Ben

[George_Fischetti]

Thank you, my Python skills are not up to par.  Appreciate the suggestion!

[George_Fischetti]

Thank you, will give this a look, interesting!!

[kelly_gilbert · Accepted solution]

@George_Fischetti - one more potential option, depending on the level of precision required:

If your addresses are in the US, the US Census Bureau has a free geocoder (with a 10,000 address limit - not sure if this is daily?)

• The caveats are in the link above, but the data source is mostly residential areas, and that lat/lon returned is interpolated
• If you aren't able to use it dynamically as an API, you can upload a file and get bulk results through the web interface

[George_Fischetti]

@kelly_gilbert, thank you - I will give this a shot!!

[NJT]

Once you have your lat/long for your two addresses it is fairly easy to do the rest.. hardest part being getting the lat/long if you have a large file.