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Providing Addresses for 4 Billion People Using Three Words (mondaynote.com)
HughPickens.com writes: 75% of the Earth's population, i.e. four billion people, effectively "don't exist" to modern computer systems because they have no physical address. The "unaddressed" can't open a bank account, can't deal properly with a hospital or an administration, and can even struggle to get a delivery. Now Frédéric Filloux writes at Monday Note that What3Words, a London startup, is seeking to solve this problem by providing a combination of three words, in any language, that specify every 3-meter by 3-meter square in the world. Each square has a 3-word address that can be communicated quickly, easily and with no ambiguity. Altogether, 40,000 words combined in triplets label 57 trillion squares. Thus far, the system has been built in 10 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Swahili, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish and, starting next month, Arabic. All together, this lingua franca requires only 5 megabytes of data, small enough to reside in any smartphone and work offline. Each square has its identity in its own language that is not a translation of another.
Messy addressing systems have measurable consequences. UPS, the world's largest parcel delivery provider, calculated that if its trucks merely drove one mile less per day, the company would save $50m a year. In United Kingdom, bad addressing costs the Royal Mail £775m per year. "One might say latitude and longitude can solve this. Sure thing. Except that GPS coordinates require 16 digits, 2 characters (+/-/N/S/E/W), 2 decimal points, space and comma, to specify a location of the size of a housing block," writes Filloux. "Not helpful for a densely populated African village, or a Mumbai slum." The system is already being used to deliver packages in the favelas in Brasil with Cartero Amigo, solar lights to the Slums in India with Pollinate-Energy and mosquito traps in Tanzania with in2care. For What3Words, the decisive boost will come from its integration in major mapping suppliers such as Google Maps or Waze.
Messy addressing systems have measurable consequences. UPS, the world's largest parcel delivery provider, calculated that if its trucks merely drove one mile less per day, the company would save $50m a year. In United Kingdom, bad addressing costs the Royal Mail £775m per year. "One might say latitude and longitude can solve this. Sure thing. Except that GPS coordinates require 16 digits, 2 characters (+/-/N/S/E/W), 2 decimal points, space and comma, to specify a location of the size of a housing block," writes Filloux. "Not helpful for a densely populated African village, or a Mumbai slum." The system is already being used to deliver packages in the favelas in Brasil with Cartero Amigo, solar lights to the Slums in India with Pollinate-Energy and mosquito traps in Tanzania with in2care. For What3Words, the decisive boost will come from its integration in major mapping suppliers such as Google Maps or Waze.
Klaatu, Verata, Nickto.
barada! for Gods sake man, it's barada!
Good question. According to their FAQ at http://what3words.com/faq/#tog... "Most postal or address systems only work in 2D (e.g. ZIP codes or postal codes in the UK). These always need additional information to specify height: e.g. Flat 6, 5th floor, 12 Lonsdale Road. With what3words, we recommend a similar approach, e.g. Flat 6, 5th floor, jelly.translated.sadly" That kinda makes sense. If you knew the elevation was 20 meters, is that 4th or 5th floor? So adding text to the address is a good solution.