What is Geocoding?

Geocoding, a subset of Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, is the process of transforming a description of a location—such as a pair of coordinates, an address, or a name of a place—to a location on the earth's surface.

Geocoding is the computational process by which a physical address is converted into geographic coordinates which can be used for a variety of mapping applications.

Many people have probably heard the term “geocoding” at least once. Geocoding means the assignment of geographical coordinates, such as latitude and longitude, based on an address or the name of a place.

For example, the address “Birla Mandir, Hill Fort Rd, Hyderabad, Telangana” is converted into “latitude: 17.40648111373929” and “longitude: 78.46907141011123” using geocoding. A process of transforming a description of latitude and longitude to an address or a name of a place, is called “reverse geocoding”.

Then, why do we link address information with latitude and longitude?

We want to visualise the position of a place and/or share the information about a place.

For example, when you want to ask a delivery company to deliver a package, even if you inform the delivery company of your address (XXX, YYY-city), the package won’t be delivered unless the delivery company’s driver knows the “location” of the address. Visualising the address, more specifically, by converting the address into latitude and longitude and displaying the information on a map helps the driver to recognise easily the delivery destination.

Moreover, when you tell a taxi driver where you want to go, on the other hand, if you tell him/her “I would like to go to a place indicated in terms of latitude XXXX and longitude YYYY,” the taxi driver won’t be able to recognise the place easily. Additionally, you won’t be able to reach the desired place unless the driver gets an exact numerical data of latitude and longitude.

In such a case, you convert the latitude and longitude information into an address and give the address to the taxi driver.

In simple words, you can say that geocoding is a process that is necessary for humans and machines to mutually grasp the correct position of a place.