Guidance and Demonstration for Improved Conflation and Geodata Reference Process

Network conflation is a continuing necessity and difficult task for agencies using geo-referenced maps and databases. Conflation is the process of identifying common points and references to reconcile two or more geo-datasets across overlapping areas. Because of differences in scales, resolutions, and accuracy or conventions, data referring to the same location often do not have the same geographic reference and cannot be combined easily. This leads to defining “near enough” criteria to expect two references to represent the same feature.