92-500-XIE 2005 Road Network File (RNF), Reference Guide

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2005 Road Network File (RNF),
Reference Guide

This guide covers the content, coverage and quality of the 2005 Road Network File (RNF) created from the road layer coverage in Statistics Canada's fully digital geographic database, the National Geographic Database (NGD). The file reflects the NGD road layer content as it existed on June 9th, 2005.

The NGD road layer was constructed as a tool to support data collection and dissemination of the Census of Population. Only road features were selected from this database to create the 2005 Road Network File (RNF). The National Geographic Database continues to be under development with new content added daily; therefore, the extraction of road information from the National Geographic Database should be viewed as preliminary. A final product with supplementary metadata will be available as part of the 2006 Census line of Geography products and services.

The 2005 Road Network File (RNF) contains roads, road names and address ranges (arc attributes) for the entire country. Most commonly, address ranges are dwelling-based and are mainly available in the large urban centres of Canada.

The 2005 RNF provides full digital line coverage for Canada. There are 14 standard RNFs:

Canada

10 provinces and 3 territories

The 2005 Road Network File's digital co-ordinates are in latitude/longitude and are based on the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). The Road Network File standard products are available in ARC/INFO® shapefile format, MapInfo® format and Geography Markup Language (GML). Please see the Technical specifications (section 5) for more details on record layouts and file formats.

Reference date

The geographic reference date is a date determined by Statistics Canada to finalize the geographic framework for which census data will be collected, tabulated and reported. The geographic reference date for the 2006 Census is January 1, 2006. The roads and road names on the Road Network File are being updated from a variety of sources, and considerable effort is being made to ensure the information for the 2006 Census data collection will be accurate as of the geographic reference date.