Automatic interpretation of Dutch addresses

Describes an interpretation system for addresses on Dutch mail. The system uses a grammar to derive the syntax of an address. After derivation of the syntax, the postal code is selected. The selection of the postal code is evaluated using a testset of 7876 images of addresses from (mainly handwritten) live mail. In 54% of the images the postal code was selected successfully. 42% of the images were rejected, in 20% rightly because the address did not contain a postal code. In 4% of the cases the algorithm misclassified a word as a postal code. The two main reasons for errors are first, the imperfect segmentation of the address into lines and words and second, the imperfect estimation of the number of characters in a word.<>