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ASDD	Australian Spatial Data Directory superseded by FIND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 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