[R-sig-Geo] Geocode for Bogota

[Dan Putler]

I'm afraid Hadley is correct. Section 10.12 of Google Maps/Google Earth
APIs Terms of Service states:

10.12 use or display the Content without a corresponding Google map,
unless you are explicitly permitted to do so in the Maps APIs
Documentation, the Street View API Documentation, or through written
permission from Google (for example, you must not use geocodes obtained
through the Service except in conjunction with a Google map, but the
Street View API Documentation explicitly permits you to display Street
View imagery without a corresponding Google map);

The full terms of service are available from
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html

Yahoo! Maps API Terms of Use:
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/maps/mapsapi/mapsapi-2141.html
has similar language in sections 1(f)(vii) and 1(f)(viii).

I think very highly of Open Street Map, but the ability to actually use
OSM data to accurately geocode locations is only going to be possible in
a very limited number of areas (Karlsruhe, Germany perhaps?) since OSM
mappers have appropriately tagged an extremely tiny fraction of the map.

The legal answer to Juan Tomás Sayago original post is to either obtain
a public road network file with address range information (which may be
available from a local or national government agency, very possible in
Canada, the US, and recently the UK, but I have no idea about Bogota or
Columbia) and use this data in conjunction with the PAGC geocoder
engine: http://www.pagcgeo.org to create a shapefile set that can then
be read into R. Alternatively, he could purchase a commercial
application and a commercial road network layer, or pay a supplier to
geocode his address list.

Dan

On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 07:57 -0800, hadley wickham wrote:
> > They limit, however, the number of geocode requests to 15,000 in a 24 hour period. If the url connection breaks, then it might be a good idea to run the same loop one more time and set add a while command to look for the missing coordinates.
> 
> It's also against the terms of service to use it in this way (to save
> on your local computer and as input to further analyses).
> 
> Hadley
> 
-- 
Dan Putler
Sauder School of Business
University of British Columbia