Civic Address Considerations for Austria
draft-wolf-civicaddresses-austria-00

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Abstract

Providing civic address considerations for individual countries is proposed in RFC4119. This documents provides such considerations for Austria, and proposes a mapping of Austrian address elements to the PIDF Location Object (PIDF-LO).

Table of Contents

1.  Introduction

2.  Terminology

3.  Civic Addresses in Austria

4.  Sample Addresses

5.  Address Codes in Austria

6.  Austrian Addresses in PIDF-LO
    6.1.  Mapping Austrian Addresses to existing PIDF-LO elements
    6.2.  Additional PIDF-LO elements for Austria
    6.3.  PIDF-LO elements not to be used in Austria
    6.4.  Country Element
    6.5.  A1 Element
    6.6.  A2 Element
    6.7.  Additional Code Element

7.  Location by Reference with the Austrian Address Code

8.  Example

9.  Security & Privacy Considerations

10.  IANA Considerations

11.  Acknowledgements

12.  References
    12.1.  Normative References
    12.2.  Informative References

§  Authors' Addresses
§  Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements

1.  Introduction

The "Presence Information Data Format Location Object" (PIDF-LO) (Peterson, J., “A Presence-based GEOPRIV Location Object Format,” December 2005.) [RFC4119] is an an object format for carrying geographical information on the Internet. PIDF-LO can be used to carry civic address information, and supports a range of "civic address types" (CATypes) to describe individual attributes of an civic address (see Section 2.2.1 of RFC 4119). The list of CATypes is currently under revision (see Secion 3.1 of draft-ietf-geopriv-revised-civic-lo (Thomson, M. and J. Winterbottom, “Revised Civic Location Format for PIDF-LO,” October 2007.) [I‑D.ietf‑geopriv‑revised‑civic‑lo]. This document is based on the revised set of CATypes.

The Austrian "Gebäude- und Wohnungsregistergesetz" (building and habitation registry law) is the legal basis for the obligation to provide a registry of civic addresses, buildings and their usable units (subdivisions of buildings). The registry is operated by "Statistik Austria GmbH", a fully governmental owned company. Responsibility for keeping records in the registry up to date is an obligation to the local administration of the individual townships.

The data format definition for the individual records is publicly available (data access itself is however restricted). Hence, an uniform address data base for whole Austria is available. Unfortunately, Austrian civic addresses use a much more complex format compared to civic addresses in PIDF-LO. A detailed description of the Austrian civic address data format is contained in section Section 3 (Civic Addresses in Austria).

A guideline of how to use PIDF-LO for Austrian addresses is necessary in order to avoid misinterpretations. This is especially important if the PIDF-LO is conveyed during an emergency call to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). A precise location information is needed in case of emergency to send out responders without any delay to the correct location of the caller. If every data-provider uses its own address mapping to PIDF-LO, confusion and misunderstandings are bound to happen. However, ideally any PSAP should have full access to the data by Statistik Austria. PSAPs must be able to rely that location information is always provided the same way by all data-providers. To address the idiosyncrasies in Austria, the civic address elements are discussed subsequently.

2.  Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 (Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” March 1997.) [RFC2119].

3.  Civic Addresses in Austria

Statistik Austria data describes estates, buildings and usable units [refs.merkmalskatalog] (Statistik Austria, “Handbuch Adress-GWR-Online Teil C Anhang 2 Merkmalskatalog,” Sept 2004.). On a single estate there may be any number of buildings. Apartment houses that have more than one staircase, are split up in separate buildings at every staircase. In every building, there may be several usable units. For example, an apartment house may have several apartments, counting as separate usable units. Moreover, one building may have more than one address, but at least one address. Below, the address elements for estates (Table 1 (Civic Address Elements for Estates)), buildings (Table 2 (Additional Civic Address Elements for Buildings)) and usable units (Table 3 (Additional Civic Address Elements for usable units)) are shown.

Note: "Floors" in Austria (as in most parts of Europe) are counted differently compared to the US. The "1st floor" in Austria is actually the floor above the floor at street level (2nd floor in US), not considering the fact that in old buildings there might be even more floors between street level and 1st floor, like "mezzanine", "2nd mezzanine". So, an Austrian "1st floor" could well be the "4th floor" according to US nomenclature.

According to Statistik Austria (Statistik Austria, “Handbuch Adress-GWR-Online Teil A Theoretisches Handbuch Kapitel 2 Warten von Adressen im Adress-GWR-Online,” Jan 2005.) [refs.adrwarten], 81.5% of Austrian addresses are of the simple type Musterstraße 1 (Musterstraße is an example street name). 5% of all addresses have an additional character, like Musterstraße 1b. 1% of Austrian addresses look like Musterstraße 21a-23a. For 8% of addresses, an additional separator is necessary, like Musterstraße 10 Haus 1 Stiege 2 or Musterstraße 20 Gruppe A Reihe 1 Parzelle 13 or Musterstraße 30 Weg 1 Parzelle 10. Very seldom, there are so called special addresses (0.03%), for example Musterstraße gegenüber 3a, meaning this address is actually vis-a-vis of house number 3a. Rather surprisingly, 4.47% of Austrian addresses contain the identifier of the estate since no house number is assigned at all, for example: Musterstraße GNR 1234, or Musterstraße GNR .12/4 Kirche (this type of addresses is common for churches) or a real example in Stockerau: Kolomaniwörth GNR 1583. This identifier is stored by Statistik Austria as Hausnummerntext. Otherwise one could misinterpret this number as a house number, what would be definitely wrong.

4.  Sample Addresses

In order to clarify the Austrian civic address format, this section provides some exemplary addresses:

1234 Musterstadt, Hauptstraße 1a – 5a Block 1b Haus 2c Stiege 1
Postleitzahl: 1234
Stadt: Musterstadt
Straße: Hauptstraße
Hausnummer - 1.  Teil - Nummer: 1
Hausnummer - 1.  Teil - Buchstabe: a
Hausnummer - Verbindungszeichen Teil 1 -> Bis: -
Hausnummer - 2.  Teil - Nummer: 5
Hausnummer - 2.  Teil - Buchstabe: a
Hausnummer - Verbindungszeichen Teil Bis -> Teil 2: Block
Hausnummer - 2.  Teil - Nummer: 1
Hausnummer - 2.  Teil - Buchstabe: b
Hausnummer - Verbindungszeichen Teil 2-> Teil 3: Haus
Hausnummer - 3.  Teil - Nummer: 2
Hausnummer - 3.  Teil - Buchstabe: c
Gebäudeunterscheidung: Stiege 1

1234 Musterstadt, Musterstraße 13 Hotel
Postleitzahl: 1234
Stadt: Musterstadt
Straße: Musterstraße
Hausnummer - 1. Teil - Nummer: 13
Gebäudeunterscheidung: Hotel

6020 Innsbruck, Anichstraße vor 35
Postleitzahl: 6020
Stadt: Innsbruck
Straße: Anichstraße
Hausnummerntext: vor ("in front of")
Hausnummer: 35

6173 Oberperfuss, Riedl 3097 (Pfarrkirche)
Postleitzahl: 6173
Stadt: Oberperfuss
Straße: Riedl
Hausnummerntext: 3097
(since the estate identifier is 81305 3097 where 81305 is the
Katastralgemeindenummer (commune subdivision name) and no house
number is assigned)
Vulgoname: Pfarrkirche

5.  Address Codes in Austria

Statistik Austria registers 4 codes: Adresscode, Adresssubcode, Objektnummer and the Nutzungseinheitenlaufnummer. The Adresscode (7 digits) is a unique code for an address in Austria. The Adressregister maps the Adresscode to the civic address. If there is a building located at an address, there is also an Adresssubcode (3 digits) assigned. Every building at an address has its own Adresssubcode (assigned sequentially starting with 001, 002, 003 and so on) in order to distinguish between buildings at the same address. Furthermore, every building located in Austria has its own unique code, the Objektnummer (7 digits). This code identifies the building independent of the Adresscode. That's because addresses are subject to change while the building may persist. To differ multiple usable units inside a building, the Nutzungseinheitenlaufnummer (4 digits) is used. This code is also assigned in sequential order for each building.

Besides, every address and building is geocoded by Statistik Austria. Hence, if every PIDF-LO location object would carry data in the format of Statistik Austria and every PSAP would use the database of Statistik Austria for mapping, a time saving, definite mapping without irregularities could be achieved.

Besides these codes, Statistik Austria maintains reference numbers for communes, localities or streets, to mention just a few.

6.  Austrian Addresses in PIDF-LO

A good number of Austrian addresses do not fit into the PIDF-LO format, as described in the previous section. There are several options to map Austrian addresses to PIDF-LO. First, one could merge all the Austrian address fields to the existing PIDF-LO elements (by violating the intended purpose of the element and loss of precision). Another way is to define other civic address elements for use by Austrian addresses. An unacceptable option would be to just omit all the address data that does not fit into PIDF-LO. However, that certainly causes wrong addresses (instead of Hauptstrasse 1a - 5a Block 1b Haus 2c Stiege 1 just Hauptstrasse 1a).

6.1.  Mapping Austrian Addresses to existing PIDF-LO elements

First, there are some common data elements, that can be mapped directly without any problems. The following elements are:

country see Section 6.4
A1 see Section 6.5
A2 political district (politscher Bezirk), see Section 6.6
A3 city (Stadt, Gemeinde)
A4 Ortschaft (see exception for Vienna below)
A6 Straße
LMK Hofname
LOC
FLR
NAM Vulgoname
PC
BLD
UNIT
ROOM
PLC
PCN
POBOX
SEAT

Unfortunately, there are elements, that can not unambiguously be entered. PIDF-LO only defines a single house number element (HNO, numeric part only) and a house number suffix element (HNS). This is unsuitable for the situation in Austria and far too less fields. Statistik Austria knows 14 data fields related to the house number of a building plus another 6 fields for distinction of different usable units inside a building (including the floor, which has a separate field in PIDF-LO). By violating the rules of PIDF-LO, one could simply concatenate all the house number information into the HNO element, even though it is expected to hold numeric part only. Consequently this may cause troubles at the side of the receiver of the location object. Moreover, the price is a loss in precision since the different house number parts cannot be easily separated again. It is recommended, not to use the HNS element for Austrian addresses, since there are addresses that do not have just one suffix. For example, the address Lazarettgasse 13A could be mapped by:

<HNO>13</HNO> <HNS>A</HNS>

However, the building at Lazarettgasse has the house number 13A-13C. Consequently, just the HNO element should be used:

<HNO>13A-13C</HNO>

And even for addresses with a house number consisting of a single number and a single prefix, just HNO should be use because of uniformity:

<HNO>13A</HNO>

Addresses with a house number text would look like:

<HNO>vor 1-1A</HNO>

with no HNS element. Last, there is another exception to mention concerning the Austrian capital Vienna (Wien). The city of Vienna is equal to its political district and even the state is called Vienna. Nevertheless, Vienna is separated in 23 districts within the same political district. Consequently, an address in Vienna would look like:

<country>AT</country>
<a1>Wien</a1>
<a2>Wien</a2>
<a3>Wien</a3>
<a4>Innere Stadt</a4> or <a4>1<a4>

The element A4, holding the city division, must hold the name or the number of the district.

6.2.  Additional PIDF-LO elements for Austria

In order to create a PIDF-LO document holding all available data from Statistik Austria separately, new elements are necessary. Table 4 (Additional PIDF-LO elements for Austria) lists the additional elements needed for Austrian addresses.

6.3.  PIDF-LO elements not to be used in Austria

The street suffix STS is not used in the data format of Statistik Austria. Consequently, this element can be omitted, since it is always included in the A6 element. This is a common practice in Austria. The following listing shows all PIDF-LO elements that should not be used for representing Austrian addresses:

A5
STS
HNS
PRD
POD
RD
RDBR
RDSUBBR
PRM
POM

6.4.  Country Element

The country element for Austria must be set to AT, since this is the ISO 3166-1 [refs.ISO3166‑1] (International Organization for Standardization, “Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions - Part 1: Country codes,” 1997.) alpha-2 code for Austria.

<country>AT</country>

The usage of the ISO 3166 code is demanded by RFC 4119 (Peterson, J., “A Presence-based GEOPRIV Location Object Format,” December 2005.) [RFC4119] and I-D.ietf-geopriv-revised-civic-lo (Thomson, M. and J. Winterbottom, “Revised Civic Location Format for PIDF-LO,” October 2007.) [I‑D.ietf‑geopriv‑revised‑civic‑lo] proposes to use upper case characters only.

6.5.  A1 Element

As proposed in I-D.ietf-geopriv-revised-civic-lo (Thomson, M. and J. Winterbottom, “Revised Civic Location Format for PIDF-LO,” October 2007.) [I‑D.ietf‑geopriv‑revised‑civic‑lo], for the PIDF-LO element A1, the second part of ISO 3166-2 [refs.ISO3166‑2] (International Organization for Standardization, “Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions - Part 2: Country subdivision code,” 1998.) can be used. However, in Austria it is also common to write out the names of the states. Table 5 (A1 element format for Austria) shows the possible values of the A1 element for Austrian states.

6.6.  A2 Element

Names of the Austrian political districts are available at Statistik Austria [refs.bezirke] (Statistik Austria, “Politische Bezirke, Gebietsstand 2007,” Oct 2007.). These names can be used for the A2 element. Statistik Austria also has a unique code for each political district, which could be used to identify the political district in the A2 element.

<A2>Bruck an der Leitha<A2> or <A2>307</A2>

6.7.  Additional Code Element

The element additional code could be used to hold the codes provided by Statistik Austria. There is an Adresscode, Adressubcode, Objektnummer and a Nutzungseinheitenlaufnummer. These unique codes identify the location. Actually, these codes alone would be enough, which leads to location by reference with address codes, for Austria described in Section 7 (Location by Reference with the Austrian Address Code).

If the additional code in a PIDF-LO document is going to hold the codes from Statistik Austria, the following format should be used:

<addcode>AdrCD=1234567;AdrsubCD=123;ObjNr=2333211;NtzLnr=0001</addcode>

By setting the country element to AT (see Section 6.4 (Country Element)), indicating an Austrian address, the Additional Code element is expected to hold codes from Statistik Austria only. When creating PIDF-LO documents using address codes by Statistik Austria, the country and addcode elements are mandatory.

7.  Location by Reference with the Austrian Address Code

As explained in the previous section, the codes of Statistik Austria alone are enough to describe a location. A PIDF-LO document could therefore just contain the country and the appropriate codes. Consequently it would be possible to just convey an identifier as key to the location information. Therefore, it would be necessary that all potential location recipients have access to the database to resolve the identifier to the location. One way to put this idea to an international and consistent way is to request an URN space for that purpose. Each country may register its own URN for their codes with different meaning.

An proposed URN space for the addresscodes provided by Statistik Austria could look like:

urn:addresscode:at:statistikaustria.AdrCD.AdrsubCD.ObjNr.NtzLnr
For example:
urn:addresscode:at:statistikaustria.1234567.004.2333211.0017

8.  Example

This section shows an example mapping of an Austrian address mapping to the existing PIDF-LO elements. This example is of a simple type, so that no additional elements are used for this case. However, if the civic address elements are needed separately at the side of the receiver, a distinct mapping to separate field would be desirable.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <presence xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf"
    xmlns:gp="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf:geopriv10"
    xmlns:cl=" urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:pidf:geopriv10:civicLoc"
    entity="pres:123@localhost">
  <tuple id="123456">
   <status>
    <gp:geopriv>
      <gp:location-info>
        <cl:civicAddress>
          <cl:country>AT</country>
          <cl:a1>Wien</a1>
          <cl:a2>Wien</a2>
          <cl:a3>Wien</a3>
          <cl:a4>9</a4>
          <cl:a6>Lazarettgasse</a6>
          <cl:HNO>13A-13C</HNO>
          <cl:PC>1090<PC>
        </cl:civicAddress>
      </gp:location-info>
      <gp:usage-rules>
        <gp:retransmission-allowed>yes</gp:retransmission-allowed>
        <gp:retention-expiry>2007-11-10T12:00:00Z</gp:retention-expiry>
      </gp:usage-rules>
    </gp:geopriv>
   </status>
   <timestamp>2007-11-09T12:00:00Z</timestamp>
  </tuple>
 </presence>

9.  Security & Privacy Considerations

RFC 4119 contains general security considerations for handling PIDF-LOs. In addition to that, it has to be considered that data from the Austrian building and habitation unit registry are generally not public, so restrictions as imposed on the original data set MUST also be imposed on the resulting PIDF-LO document.

10.  IANA Considerations

At this stage, this document contains no considerations for IANA. However, if a definition of an "civic address URN" as sketeched out in section Section 7 (Location by Reference with the Austrian Address Code) is to be used, the respective URN namespaces need to be registered with IANA.

11.  Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Gregor Jänin for contributing insights about the Austrian civic address data format.

12.  References

12.1. Normative References

12.2. Informative References

Authors' Addresses

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