Frequently Asked Questions

Owned by Paul McCullough (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Dec 04, 2019 by Samuel Valdez (Unlicensed)
2 min read

How may I request a building address change or the addition of a building number to my building?

Please see the answer to Question 14 under PERMIT SERVICES at the Department of Building Inspection's Frequently Asked Questions Web page.

Why is EAS internal to the city and not generally available on the web?

We would love to change this, but EAS is a business critical application. If we need a new create a new address, and EAS is down, we may not be able to support other business critical operations (issue permits etc). If we expose EAS to the entire web, this introduces risks (such as denial of service attacks) that increase the probability of an outage. Until we receive funded support to mitigate these risks, we will not open EAS to the web at large.

What browsers are supported?

We test the application in Internet Explorer 8, Firefox, and Chrome. The best experience will be in Chrome, then Firefox, then Internet Explorer 8.

Is there a geocoding service?

Yes there is, See this page.

Is it possible to get a "data dump"?

Yes it is. See this page.

Why can't I see my apartment?

The "seed data set" that was used to initially populate the database for EAS was from the Address Verification System (AVS) at the Department of Building Inspection (DBI). Apartments are not tracked in AVS. While EAS supports apartment addresses (as well as condos and time shares) there is currently no executive level sponsorship for having these data entered into EAS. The business case behind apartment level addresses is resident notification - but without executive sponsorship, maintenance of apartment level addresses will be ad hoc.

Why are there so few apartment addresses?

See above.

Why is the zip code for my address wrong?

A very small fraction of addresses in EAS will have the wrong zip code. These addresses will generally be near the boundary of the zip code area. Zip codes are not critical for us to deliver services so this is not really an operational issue. When we update our zip codes, we use a data product that is derived (and generalized) from the USPS zip code data. It is the generalization that causes these errors.

EAS opens extra windows, sometimes lots of them. Why won't it use tabs?

If you have this problem you are probably using IE8. If it bothers you, you can "disable protected mode" by doing the following. 

Tools > Internet Options > Security > Security For This Zone > Enable Protected Mode (uncheck)