Glossary and Terms
| Term, Acronym or Abbreviation | Definition |
| ABS | Australian Bureau of Statistics |
| ACT | Australian Capital Territory |
| Address | A structured label for any place that could deliver or receive a good or service. |
| Address Contributor | Supplier of address information to G‑NAF. |
| Address Level Geocode | An address in G‑NAF that has a parcel level geocode (i.e. a geocode reliability code of 2). Also referred to as a “parcel level” address. |
| AEC | Australian Electoral Commission |
| AGIL | Australian Government Indigenous Location |
| Alias Address (or Alternate Address) | Another label for a Principal Address which may differ because of a variation in some or all address components (i.e. numbers, levels, street name, locality name). An Alias Address will share the same location as the Principal Address. Association with Principal Address may be provided by an Address Contributor or determined programmatically. |
| AMAS | Address Matching Approval System – A certification program developed by Australia Post to improve the accuracy of postal addresses. The software prepares addresses for barcode creation, ensures quality addressing, and enables mailers to qualify for postal discounts for Pre-Sort letter lodgements. |
| ANSI | American National Standards Institute |
| ANZLIC | Australian New Zealand Land Information Council |
| AOI | Area of Interest |
| AP | Australia Post |
| AS/ANZ 4819 | Australia and New Zealand Standard for Rural and Urban Addressing |
| AS/NZS 4590 | Australian Standard for Interchange of Client Information |
| ASDD | Australian Spatial Data Directory superseded by FIND |
| ASDI | Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure |
| ASGS | Australian Statistical Geography Standard |
| AUT | Authority Table |
| AV | Address Verification |
| AVS | Address Verification Service |
| AWS | Amazon Web Services |
| Band Means | The average of the spectral data in relation to a pixel. |
| Base64 | An encoding method that converts binary data into ASCII text and vice versa and is one of the methods used by MIME |
| Batch Workflow Service | A web service that can be used to process a comma separated file stored on an SFTP or FTP server using PSMA Cloud workflows |
| Buffer Zone | The inclusive area difference between Land Use 2 metre coverage and Urban and Remote coverage. |
| Building | A structure generally permanent in nature which has been constructed to meet a specific objective (e.g. housing, storage, and workplace) and less permanent structures such as caravans and other portable housing may also be represented. All buildings are represented spatially both as polygons and points. |
| Building Name | A building or property name that is associated with an address. The name is typically free text and is not unique to any address. |
| Building Point | The automated calculation of the Building Polygon centroid. |
| Building Polygon | A Building Polygon is a digital representation of the roof outline of a building classified from remotely sensed information that identifies every structure greater than 9m2 and falls with an area defined by PSMA for the capture of buildings. |
| Class | Description of a set of objects that share the same attributes, operations, methods, relationships, and semantics [UML]. Note: A class does not always have an associated geometry (e.g. the metadata class). |
| Confidence Level | G‑NAF is currently built from three national address datasets. The confidence level of an address indicates the level of usage of each address by the contributor address datasets. |
| Contour | A line connecting points of equal elevation/height, used to display a 3D surface on a 2D map or image. |
| Contributor Data | Address datasets held and maintained by organisations external to PSMA that is being made available for the purpose of building and maintaining G‑NAF. |
| CEB | Commonwealth Electoral Boundaries |
| CGNA | Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia. Is now known as the Permanent Committee on Place Names (PCPN). |
| CORS | Continuous Operating Reference Station |
| CSV | Comma Separated Value – A file format used to store tabular data |
| Datum | A datum is a mathematical surface on which a mapping and coordinate system is based. The definition includes: the spheroid used, an origin, and fixed point(s). |
| DEM | Digital Elevation Model |
| Digital Elevation Model (DEM) | The representation of continuous elevation values over a topographic surface by a regular array of sampled z-values, referenced to a common datum and expressed on a regular grid spacing or raster data set. The DEM is a ground-only representation and excludes vegetation such as trees and shrubs and human constructed features such as sheds, houses and bridges. |
| (Bare earth model on regular grid) | Note: Some organisations refer to a bare earth model on an irregular grid as a DTM. In this context, refer the alternate DTM definition in this document. |
| Digital Terrain Model (DTM) – (Bare earth model on irregular grid) | A topographic model of the earth’s ground surface in digital format represented by mass points of variable density and may include break lines. The DTM representation of ground includes works such as levees, banks and roads, but excludes vegetation such as trees and shrubs and human constructed features such as sheds, houses and bridges. Note: Some organisations refer to a bare earth model on a regular grid as a DTM. In this context, refer to the specific DEM definition in this document. |
| DMP | Oracle binary format dump file |
| DPID | Delivery Point Identifier – An Australia Post identifier of an address commonly used in barcoding mail to reduce postage rates |
| DSM | Digital Surface Model |
| DTM | Digital Terrain Model |
| Elevation | This is a measure of height relative to a known vertical datum. |
| Endpoint | The location for accessing a web service using a specific protocol and data format |
| ESRI | Environmental Systems Research Institute |
| Event | Characteristic of a feature measured within an object without modifying the associated geometry. |
| FAQ | Frequently Asked Question |
| Feature | Abstraction of real-world phenomena. |
| Feature Attribute | Characteristic of a feature (e.g. name of an area). |
| FIND | Australian Government spatial data catalogue |
| FME | Feature Manipulation Engine |
| FOI | Feature of Interest |
| FSDF | Foundation Spatial Data Framework |
| FTP | File Transfer Protocol |
| GA | Geoscience Australia (Australian Government) |
| Gap Geocode | A geocode created programmatically based on address ranging in the absence of a geocode being allocated to a specific property. This geocode may not necessarily lie within a property polygon. |
| Gazetted Locality | The officially recognised boundary of a suburb (in cities and larger towns) or locality (outside cities and larger towns) name. The naming authority within each jurisdiction has its own legislation and guidelines for recording place names in their registers or gazetteers. The PCPN coordinates place naming activities across Australia and New Zealand. |
| GCP | Ground Control Point |
| GCCSA | Greater Capital City Statistical Area |
| GDA94 | Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994 |
| GDA2020 | The Geocentric Datum of Australia 2020 (GDA2020) is Australia’s new national datum which replaces GDA94. GDA2020 is of higher-accuracy than GDA94, aligns more closely with GPS and GNSS positioning services and supports nationally consistent datasets, free of the known distortions of GDA94 |
| Geocode | A point feature for an address spatially defined by a coordinate. In G‑NAF an address may have multiple geocodes representing various real world features (e.g. parcel, property, building centroid, street centroid, locality centroid etc.) associated with a physical address. The geographic coordinates are expressed as latitude/longitude in decimal degrees. |
| Geocode Level Type | The geocode level type indicates which geocodes have been assigned to an address. Every address within G‑NAF must have a locality level geocode. Addresses may also have a street level geocode and a parcel level geocode. |
| Geocode Priority | G‑NAF is able to assign multiple geocodes to an address. The geocode priority is a priority order established by PSMA to enable a default geocode to be assigned to each address which represents the geocode of the highest precision currently assigned to an address. |
| Geocode Reliability | Refers to the geocode precision and is linked to how the geocode was generated. |
| Geoscience Australia | Australian government agency for national geological survey information |
| GML | (OpenGIS) Geography Markup Language – An XML grammar written in XML Schema for the description of application schemas as well as the transport and storage of geographical information. For more information, visit www.opengeospatial.org |
| G-NAF | Geocoded National Address File – An index of physical Australian addresses, each with a geographic coordinate |
| G-NAF Live | Address data only available through API services for finding the most up-to-date geocoded addresses from each state and territory government of Australia. |
| G‑NAF Merge Criteria | Those components of an address string used by the G‑NAF process to uniquely identify an address. |
| GPS | Global Positioning System |
| GUI | Graphical User Interface |
| Height | This is a measure of relative vertical difference between two known points on the same vertical datum. |
| IARE | Indigenous Area |
| ICSM | Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping |
| ICT | Information and Communications Technology |
| IDB | Integrated Database |
| IL | Inbound Logistics |
| ILOC | Indigenous Locality |
| IM | Information Management |
| IP | Intellectual Property |
| IREG | Indigenous Region |
| IT | Information Technology |
| ITIL | IT Infrastructure Library |
| Jurisdiction | Reference based on the physical territory that an entity’s authority covers. In this instance jurisdiction refers to the Local, State, Territory and Federal Government authorities. |
| KML | Keyhole Markup Language |
| Layer | An OGC map layer |
| Locality | A named geographical area defining a community or area of interest, which may be rural or urban in character. Usually known as a Suburb in an urban area. The localities used in G‑NAF are the gazetted localities as provided by the respective jurisdictions. |
| Locality Alias | Another recognised name for a gazetted locality name. Could be misspellings, historic authoritative names or unauthoritative names. |
| LGA | Local Government Area |
| LIDAR | Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth |
| LULC | Land Use Land Cover data refers to data that is a result of classifying raw satellite data into LULC categories based on the return value of the satellite image. |
| LYNX | PSMA online data delivery system |
| Map | Pictorial representation of geographic data |
| MB | Mesh Block |
| Mesh Block | Mesh Blocks are the smallest geographic region in the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS), and the smallest geographical unit for which Census data is available. |
| MGA | A Map Grid of Australia (MGA) is a metric rectangular grid system (i.e. east and north). It is a Cartesian coordinate system based on the Universal Transverse Mercator projection and the Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994. The unit of measure is the metre. |
| Minimum Resolution | The lowest detail/most coarse representation of a Building Outline acceptable to PSMA. |
| Namespace | XML Namespaces provide a method to avoid element name conflict in XML |
| NAMF | National Address Management Framework – A nationally consistent, standards-based approach to address management. A set of guidelines from which organisations can implement NAMF-compliant data management systems |
| National Jurisdiction Imagery Mosaic | Raster-based datasets |
| NBN | National Broadband Network |
| NCS | NAMF Notification and Compliance Service |
| NSW | New South Wales |
| NT | Northern Territory |
| NWS | NAMF Web Service – A Web Service that supports the use of address information within the National Address Management Framework |
| Object | Entity with a well-defined boundary and identity that encapsulates state and behaviour [UML Semantics]. Note: An object is an instance of a class. |
| Off Nadir | Refers to remote sensing. Any point not directly beneath a scanner’s detectors, but rather off at an angle. |
| OGC | Open Geospatial Consortium – a non-profit, international, voluntary consensus standards organisation that leads the development of standards for geospatial and location based services. For more information, visit www.opengeospatial.org |
| OL | Outbound Logistics |
| Open data | Data freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. |
| OT | Other Territories |
| Other Territories | Refers to external Territories of Australia included within the PSMA datasets: Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Norfolk Island and Jervis Bay. |
| Package | Grouping of a set of classes, relationships, and even other packages with a view to organising the model into more abstract structures. |
| PAF | Postal Address File – a list of Australian addresses used for postal purposes, only available through the AMAS program; used to support the efficient processing of mail through Australia Post’s operational network |
| Parse | The process of separating individual components within a string of text into separate parts, for example, breaking up an address line into parts such as Thoroughfare Number, Name, Type, Locality, State and Postcode (among others) |
| Parsed Address | An address that is presented as a set of discrete fields in a NAMF compliant structure |
| Parsing Service | A web service that takes an unstructuredAddress and splits it into its constituent structured fields. This web service implements the NAMF Web Services Specifications validateAddress interface. |
| PCPN | Permanent Committee on Place Names, a standing committee within the ICSM. |
| PID | Persistent Identifier |
| Postcodes | Postcodes are allocated to geographic areas to facilitate the efficient processing and delivery of mail. |
| Primary Address | A Primary Address is a principal address that contains all the components of an address except flat number information. Where flat number information exists for an address then this forms part of a Secondary Address and a linkage made to the Primary Address. Alternatively a Primary Address can be linked to one or more Secondary Addresses by PSMA where identified by an address contributor (e.g. involves private road in complex development, public housing estates etc.) |
| Primary Postcodes | Primary postcodes are unique integers based on the postcodes used to differentiate between gazetted localities within a jurisdiction that share the same name. They may not necessarily be coincident with the postcode for any area. |
| Principal Address | Accepted label for an Address which may have zero, one or more than one associated Alias Address. |
| PSMA | PSMA Australia Limited, formerly known as Public Sector Mapping Agencies, is an unlisted public company wholly owned by the State, Territory and Australian Governments. PSMA combines reliable spatial data from Australian state governments with leading-edge technology to create national spatial information datasets, presenting the data in meaningful and useful ways for a wide range of industry, government and community uses that deliver economic, environmental and social benefits to Australia |
| PSMA Online Data Delivery System | A suite of applications to store, quality assure and distribute PSMA’s datasets. |
| PSV | Pipe Separated Values file |
| QA | Quality Assurance |
| QLD | Queensland |
| Quality | Data is of the highest quality reflective at the time and fields provided. Key factors are timeliness, consistency and completeness. |
| RA | Remoteness Area |
| Raster Data | The raster data model uses a grid to cover the space and the value of each cell (pixel) in the grid to correspond to the characteristic of the geographic feature at the cell location. The cell is the smallest unit in the grid. A grid is a matrix of cells. Raster data could come from many sources such as aerial photographs, satellite imagery, digital pictures or scanned maps. |
| Raster Resolution | This is a measure of an image’s pixel/cell dimensions, providing information on the level of detail of features it represents. The smaller the value the higher level of detail represented. |
| Reference Data | Each address entering G‑NAF is tested to ensure it can be matched against the geospatial region to which it relates: state, locality and street. The datasets used for this geospatial verification are: National Road Centreline Dataset (PSMA Transport & Topography) Gazetted Locality Boundaries for Australia (PSMA Administrative Boundaries). These two datasets are commonly referred to as the Reference Data. |
| Release Report | This is the report provided with each release of a product and will outline key issues and production changes applied during the assembly. Included will be statistics and change volumes. |
| Resolution | This is a measure of the geometric fidelity of each building represented. It is a combination of the minimum area of a polygon and minimum vertex separation. |
| Rules | Rules are at times applied to contributor addresses as part of the G‑NAF processing where errors are identified in the addresses such as the incorrect spelling of street names, incorrect street types or incorrect localities. The application of these rules generates alias street localities or localities depending on the rule applied. |
| SA | South Australia |
| SA | Statistical Area (SA1, SA2, SA3 and SA4) |
| SDLC | Software Development Life Cycle |
| SEB | State/Territory Electoral Boundaries |
| Secondary Address | A Secondary Address is any address with flat number information or more literally any address where flat_number_prefix, flat_number or flat_number_suffix is not null. Alternatively, a Secondary Address can be linked to a Primary Address by PSMA where identified by an address contributor (e.g. involves private road in complex development, public housing estates etc.). |
| SEIFA | Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas |
| Sensor | A device or machine that measures or records one or more physical properties. |
| sFTP | Secure File Transfer Protocol |
| SHP | ESRI Shapefile |
| SLD | Styled Layer Descriptor – an OGC language that is used to define how geographical data will be portrayed on a map |
| Spatial Resolution | The spatial resolution varies for the Geoscape Dataset depending on the Theme and/or Layer used and whether the area has been classified as “Urban”, “Rural Balance” and ‘Remote Communities”. |
| SQL | Structured Query Language |
| SOS | Section of State |
| SOSR | Section of State Range |
| SRS | Spatial Reference System – a projected or geographic coordinate reference system |
| Street (or Road) | An in-use name for a street name that exists within PSMA’s National Road Centreline Dataset (i.e. reference dataset) within PSMA’s Transport & Topography product. |
| Street Alias | In-use name for a Street name not existing within PSMA’s Road centreline dataset (i.e. reference dataset). |
| Street Locality | A Street or Road within a particular Locality e.g. Smith St Melbourne VIC 3000. A street is unique to a locality. If it crosses a locality boundary, that segment receives a different street_locality_pid and treated as another street. |
| Street Locality Alias | A Street or Road within a particular Locality that is an alternative name for a Street Locality Address. |
| SUA | Significant Urban Area |
| Supplier | Entities that supply data to PSMA |
| Supply Chain | PSMA supply chain for products and services |
| SVN | Subversion |
| T&T | Transport and Topography (a PSMA data product) |
| TAB | MapInfo Professional Table File |
| TAS | Tasmania |
| TIN | Triangulated Irregular Network |
| TOGAF | The Open Group Architecture Framework |
| UCL | Urban Centre Locality |
| UML | Unified Modelling Language |
| Unique Identifier | An unrepeatable number assigned to a spatial feature. |
| Unparsed address | An address that is presented as a string containing the address details |
| Utility | The functionality offered of a product or service to meet a particular need (what it does or fit for purpose) |
| UUID | Universal Unique Identifier |
| VAR | Value Added Reseller |
| Vector Data | A vector data model is a coordinate-based data model that represents geographic features as points, lines, and polygons. Each point feature is represented as a single coordinate pair, while line and polygon features are represented as ordered lists of vertices. Attributes are associated with each vector feature, as opposed to a raster data model, which associates attributes with grid cells. |
| VIC | Victoria |
| Visible | Observable by someone with reasonable skill and expertise. |
| VNIR | Visible and near-infrared |
| WA | Western Australia |
| WFS | Web Feature Service – an OGC defined interface for requesting geographical features across the web using platform independent calls |
| WFS | Web Feature Service |
| WGS84 | World Geodetic System 1984 |
| WMS | Web Map Service – an OGC defined interface for requesting map images across the web using platform independent calls |
| WMTS | Web Map Tile Service |
| WoE | Whole of Economy |
| WoG | Whole of Government |
| Workflow | A workflow is made up of one or more functions |
| WPS | Web Processing Service |
| WSDL | Web Services Description Language |
| WV2 | WorldView-2 – a commercial Earth observation satellite owned by DigitalGlobe. |
| WV3 | WorldView-3 – a commercial Earth observation satellite owned by DigitalGlobe. |
| XML | Extensible Markup Language |