Finding latitude / longitude from UK postcode (geocoding?)

[KarenLloyd]

Hiya

Just a quick note. I was looking at how to send latitude / longitude with job locations.

There are lots of suggestions involving Google, Yahoo and other mapping services, including thread184-1708343 - but I came across this list today that gives the latitude and longitude for the first part (outcode) from UK postcodes.

http://www.freemaptools.com/download-uk-postcode-lat-lng.htm

http://www.freemaptools.com/download/outcode-postcodes/postcodes.csv

Just import the CSV into your own lookup table.

Hope this helps save someone else some time.

All the best...

Karen

 

[Mike Lewis]

Karen,

Thanks for posting this. I do quite a lot of work with geocoding of UK postcodes, so this is of interest to me.

I don't know whether you are aware of this, but in the UK we often use the National Grid rather than latitude / longitude in geographic applications. The National Grid is a simple cartsian system that locates any point in Great Britain to any desired precision. Its main advantage is that it is simpler to use in calculations, for example determining all points in a given radius of a given postcode. (Sorry, you no doubt already know all this, but it might be of interest to others.)

I have written a couple of articles myself that might be of some interest:

http://www.hexcentral.com/articles/postcodes-distances.htm

http://www.hexcentral.com/articles/sql-postcodes.htm

I wasn't aware of the tool that you referenced. I'll take a look at it.

Mike


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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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