Can the South African address standard (SANS 1883) work for small local municipalities?

Abstract

The standard defines eleven address types that describe all forms of addresses currently in use in South Africa. The entity relationship diagram (ERD) in SANS 1883-2 includes no fewer than 26 tables and approximately 60 relationships between them, while the 'tblAddress' table has 34 attributes that are required for the various address types. The question arises whether such an all encompassing standard is practical in a local municipality with the responsibility to produce and maintain official addresses for only two of the address types in SANS-1883, namely Street Address and Site Address. As an example, of the 34 attributes in the above-mentioned 'tblAddress' table, 15 do not apply to the Street Address and Site Address types and are irrelevant for these municipalities. The municipality ID and in most municipalities, the province ID, are identical for all addresses and do not have to be recorded for each individual address. These IDs can be added whenever address data are exchanged. For each individual address, the ERD provides for a used or colloquial name. Apart from the fact that this could introduce different spellings of the same name, if the used name changes, each individual address record has to be updated. It would be more efficient to link addresses to an area representing the used name. SANS 1883 does not attempt to show how address data are kept in synch with other datasets such as place names, cadastre and the street network. The Site Address defines an address consisting of a number and a locality, such as '25436 Soshanguve CC', as they were assigned in apartheid-era townships, as well as addresses such as 'Plot 45 Waterkloof AH' that occur in peri-urban areas. Five different types of numbers are defined, including an erf number, small holding number, farm number and farm portion number. The format of these numbers falls under the jurisdiction of the Chief Surveyor General and it is questionable whether SANS 1883 should provide definitions for them. The objectives of this paper are to 1) point out complexities in SANS 1883 relating to the Street and Site address types; 2) propose a simplified data model of these address types; 3) show how address data based on this model can be kept in synch with other datasets; 4) recommend content for a potential informative annex for SANS 1883 that would assist, in particular, small local municipalities to implement an address database whose data can be exchanged according to SANS 1883. While our paper is based on the South African address standard, the Street address type, consisting of a street number, street name and place name, is common to many countries and our findings are thus applicable to an international audience.