Those 3 Little Words
It is amazing to think that the geospatial industry is worth over US$150bn yet there is no precise global address or location reference system that can be easily used by everyone.
We can of course use latitude and longitude coordinates, which is fine for the machines and those in the know, however for us ‘ordinary’ people this can be quite daunting! Coordinates are difficult to remember and the transposing of this data can be breed errors.
Trying to specify the exact location of a bridge, canal or road – that does not have an exact address is difficult and provides challenges and indeed errors.
Over 75% of the world’s countries suffer from inconsistent, complicated or even worse – no addressing system at all. According to the UN – this makes around four billion people – invisible!
Chris Sheldrick – CEO of what3words used a system utilising words instead of coordinates to assist planning his event logistics. Chris then quickly realised that this could do more than get musicians to the correct location in Birmingham and developed an algorithm engine to provide a global solution.
What3words is now a global address system that is based on a worldwide grid of 3m x 3m squares, each having a unique ‘3 words’ to identify the space. This is used over land and sea and each of the 57 trillion squares has been given a pre-assigned and fixed address of 3 words. This is achievable in 9 languages currently with 14 more languages on the way! Voice recognition is also in development to change the game in regards of your car’s sat nav.
A comparison of immediate memory span for digits, letters and words suggests that our ability to remember three words long enough to write them down is near perfect, whilst our ability to remember a sequence of numbers or letters of the appropriate length for 3m x 3m addressing is zero.
An example – the O2 in London obviously covers several 3m x 3m grids, but where the walkway meets the centre of the entrance, this address is ‘tunes.bind.bets’ – 3 metres to the left is ‘march.foam.since’. Now I could remember these words – but the coordinates I would struggle with.
What3words has an IOS app, Android App, website and more for you to discover what3words you are!
So simple, yet so effective. Well done Chris!