Address confidence

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Address Confidence Methodology

Address confidence is a score (ACS) that is appled to the LightBox Address fabric that resides within the SmartFabric product.

Introduction

Lightbox blends and synthesizes thousands of data sources when constructing SmartFabric. As a result, SmartFabric contains over two hundred fifty million addresses, and the dataset contains addresses that have varying levels of confidence or levels of accuracy. For certain applications, users of SmartFabric may want to isolate addresses with a high likelihood of existence.

Address confidence score (ACS) is a scale that conveys the likelihood that an address exists and if it is used or can be used. Within SmartFabric™, an ACS is connected to each unique address. This implies that for a multiple dwelling unit, the base (unitless) address, and each secondary unit, is assigned an ACS and the values may not be the same. Different types of addresses such as business, residential, and government are assigned scores using the same scale.

Pro Tip:

Understanding your use case is important when deciding how relevant is. There are times when it is necessary to understand the existence of an actual address or the address count within a neighborhood. Use cases such as planning to place infrastructure at a location that rely on the number of houses or units that exist makes the use of ACS very important.

There are other use cases where all the available addresses need to be used. Using the address fabric within a geocoding application is a perfect example. In this case, addresses such as units will fluctuate as suites are added or combined. This makes addressing very dynamic, so using all the possible addresses at that location makes since.

ACS Score range

LightBox developed an address confidence model to assign a confidence score to each unique address. Each address is assigned a value ranging from 1-5. The lowest confidence level being 1, and 5 being the highest level. An address with a higher confidence value is more likely to exist.

ACS Scores Range from 1-5

1 - Being the least confident that that address currently exists.
5 - Being the most confident that that address currently exists and is being used.

Many unique and complex data elements are used as inputs for the assignment of address confidence scores (ACS). Address information is extracted from parcel, assessor, USPS, and many other data sources.

Creating the ACS score

Addresses are organized, standardized, geocoded, and spatially linked using LightBox proprietary geospatial matching algorithms.

Many unique datasets, containing address information, are blended together and information from the processing is used for address verification and score determination.
Several attributes such as address quality, standardization output, and original source information are used for score determination.

In addition, address cleansing and source metadata is used to determine the confidence level of an address.

Use Cases

Address confidence scores can be used to enrich an address dataset and enhance business processes. The ACS attribute is useful when functioning as a filter to assist with sorting address datasets.

For example, a company may want to filter out addresses that are below a certain ACS threshold.
Uses could include not utilizing any addresses with an ACS of 1, or only using records with an ACS greater than or equal to 3. Filtering can be used for internal purposes or to create a custom set of SmartFabricaddresses.

Broadband / Telecom Use Case

Understanding the ACS of a geocode or an address can influence the due diligence needed to perform certain processes.

For example, a data analyst can use and ACS to assist in the investigation of unserved broadband areas. If an address is identified as unserved and has a low ACS, then another workflow may be initiated for address verification.

Ultimately, the address confidence model supplements SmartFabric by adding an address confidence attribute. LightBox is committed to obtaining high quality data sources to enhance SmartFabric.

The assignment of address confidence scores will continue to improve as additional high quality address sources are added into the blending processes and we refine our models.

Why would LightBox carry addresses that have a low confidence score?

We pull together our addresses from many sources. Addresses are very dynamic and come and go often.

For example, in a strip mall with 10 units, one unit may close down but then gets merged with the neighboring unit as they expand. The old unit address no longer exists.
The opposite can be true, a large unit could be divided into two smaller ones, creating a new address.

The LightBox Address universe contains all the possible addresses at a location to support all addressing use cases.

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Table of contents

Address Confidence Methodology 
Introduction
ACS Score range
Creating the ACS score
Use Cases