TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) is address data from the US Census Bureau. Importing it into Nominatim gives house-number-level geocoding accuracy — essential for rural areas where OpenStreetMap data may only resolve to a street or town.
- Rural deployments where recipients live on roads that OSM has mapped but without individual house numbers
- Suburbs and new developments where house numbers haven't been added to OSM yet
- Any deployment where address search returns the right street but not the right house
You probably don't need TIGER for dense urban areas where OSM has good house-number coverage.
In docker/docker-compose.yml, uncomment the TIGER import line in the Nominatim service:
nominatim:
environment:
# Uncomment to import TIGER address data (adds 30-60 min to first import)
IMPORT_TIGER_ADDRESSES: "true"Then re-provision maps from the dashboard (Settings > Map Data > Re-provision).
- Downloads US Census TIGER address range data (~2 GB)
- Imports it into Nominatim alongside the OpenStreetMap data
- Adds interpolated house numbers along street segments
- Makes address searches like "1234 Rural Route 5" resolvable
| With TIGER | Without TIGER |
|---|---|
| House-number accuracy everywhere | House numbers only where OSM volunteers mapped them |
| +30-60 min first import | Faster first import |
| ~500 MB more disk | Less disk |
| Better for rural areas | Fine for cities |
The quarterly build pipeline at safecare.app pre-processes TIGER data per state. When available, the provisioning system downloads pre-built TIGER files alongside the OSRM routing data, skipping the import step.