Setting up a street addressing project in the Global South
In many cities, most streets have no name and most doors no number. GéoDataNum supports municipalities and their partners in giving every door an address, and turning it into a city management tool.
An address is the first urban service
Street addressing makes it possible to locate a home, a shop or a facility on the ground, through a system of maps, street signs and door numbers. It does not replace a cadastre, but it can prepare and complement one.
Once every door is identified, the city has a common base on which services, utilities and residents can rely.
What street addressing is for
Finding your way
Residents, visitors, public officials and delivery drivers find a door without having to ask for directions.
Emergency services
Ambulances and firefighters arrive faster when the call gives an address.
Urban services
Waste collection, roads, street lighting: rounds and works are planned on a reliable base.
Utilities
Water and electricity operators locate their customers, their works and their bills.
Local revenue
The address register helps identify activities and occupants, the basis for sounder local taxation.
Knowledge of the city
Facilities, shops, densities: the addressing survey produces a first snapshot of the territory.
The steps of a street addressing project
We can support the whole operation, or only the steps where you need help.
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Scoping and feasibility
Perimeter, priority neighbourhoods, costs, schedule, stakeholders to involve: the municipality remains the project owner.
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Addressing unit
A small municipal team leads the operation, then keeps it alive. We train it from the start.
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Coding
Division of the city into zones, rules for numbering and naming streets, door numbering based on distance from an origin point.
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Mapping
Addressing plan and street index, drawn up from aerial or satellite imagery and field surveys.
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Survey and numbering
Door after door: the number is put up, the occupant is met, and the useful information is entered on a smartphone.
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Street signs
Installed at junctions, using durable materials and a layout that keeps costs down.
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Address register
A reference geographic database, shared with municipal departments, government bodies and utility operators.
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Updating
New streets, new buildings: the addressing is kept up to date, and data is exchanged with partners.
What GéoDataNum brings
- Design of the coding system and the addressing plan.
- Smartphone data collection, with forms that work offline.
- The geographic database of streets and addresses, on open-source GIS software.
- A web application to search for an address, view its record and track the progress of the operation.
- Training of the addressing unit, so that the municipality stays in control.
Conditions for success
- Repeated awareness-raising among residents, focused on the services provided.
- A municipality that owns the project and an identified team to keep it alive.
- Particular attention to informal neighbourhoods, where giving an address is a sensitive decision.
- Modest choices: number all streets first, name them later, step by step.
- Updating planned from the start, with the resources to match.
This approach follows the street addressing method promoted by the World Bank for African cities (C. Farvacque-Vitkovic and L. Godin, The Future of African Cities, 1998), adapted to today’s digital tools.
A service linked to the others
Street addressing connects with our other services: structuring territorial reference datasets, developing mapping applications and training teams. In cities where data is scarce, the tool must remain simple to keep up to date.
A street addressing project in the making?
Tell us the city, its approximate size and how far the project has progressed: we will get back to you to discuss it.