Survey of Unique Identifiers in NYC Open Data
Joins, Sorrows, and Surprises
In 2019, I presented at NYC School of Data, an all day celebration of all things open data. My talk focused on a few fundamental unique identifiers found in many NYC open geospatial datasets.
The identifiers I discussed were:
- Borough, block, lot (BBL)
- Building identifier number (BIN)
- Addresses
- Street Segment IDs
The talk is certainly not comprehensive, but was meant as a gentle introduction to all the caveats (and fascinating challenges) that comes with trying to uniquely identify infrastructure in a fast-changing and complex city.