What Three Words - Global Addressing System

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09-15-2015 10:39 AM
JeffWard
Occasional Contributor III

I saw a tweet today about immigration offices in Thailand having three word addresses and was directed to this site - www.what3words.com.

I watched the video and checked out the map.  It is an intriguing system, I was wondering what you folks thought about it.

I assign addresses in my position as well as deal with addresses in error, or people that don't know their address (it happens more than you would think).  Remembering three words would be easier than a number a street a city a state/province and a postal code.

There's less to screw up, but my initial thoughts are spelling and transposition.  Also regardless of how much easier it is to remember three words you still need to get there using the transportation network.  Emergency personnel can use parts of a traditional address to know the general location of an incident whereas with three random (and they are random) words nobody is going to know where that is until they plug it into the web site.

What do you think about it?

Jeff Ward
Summit County, Utah
40 Replies
JoeBorgione
MVP Emeritus

I just took a look at it Jeff. Send the pizza to ports.saints.combining, and have them ask for Joe.....

The thing that is weird for me is the randomness of the three words; I guess they need to be random when you are dealing with that many grid cells. You think we could get Morgan Co to use it?

That should just about do it....
JeffWard
Occasional Contributor III

I still think it would be problematic for emergency personnel.  Pronunciation might be a problem as well.  Like vocab.happy.rabble - (Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago), what if it was misheard as vocab.happy.rebel which is somewhere in the middle of Alaska.

And is vocab really a word?

Jeff Ward
Summit County, Utah
ChrisDonohue__GISP
MVP Alum

I wonder if the developers of the Three Word system ran it through some checks for potential pronunciation confusion?  As I'm learning more about addressing, I've found the Emergency Response criteria of not having potentially confusing location names is an interesting constraint.

For example, at the County-wide level in my area all new Streets are vetted to ensure not only that the new street name does not exactly match an existing street name, but also that a new street name is not close enough in pronunciation that it could be mistaken for another when a call comes in to Dispatch.

I've discovered that there is even coding developed to help check on this (Soundex functions)

Previous GeoNet thread on coding to find similar sounding street names

Help finding similar sounding street names

Chris Donohue, GISP

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GeorgeHouck
New Contributor III
vocab.
[vocab.]
ABBREVIATION
  1. vocabulary.

So, yeah, no it is an abbreviation.

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JeffWard
Occasional Contributor III

And who would want to live at fried.monkey.brains?

Jeff Ward
Summit County, Utah
JeffWard
Occasional Contributor III

They could make money on personalized addresses - buy your 3m square.  Then you would have to get the copyright lawyers involved.

Jeff Ward
Summit County, Utah
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ChrisDonohue__GISP
MVP Alum

Interesting, but I'm still a bit fuzzy on the practical part of this system.

I wonder how they chose the words.  They don't seem to be in any sequence as one traverses from one 3 meter x 3 meter square to another.  They seem random.

Also, how will their addressing handle multiple locations in one 3x3 location.  For example, the classic local conundrum of multistory Condo's?  Or an 100 story building in New York City or another major city?

Finally, how will the average person relate to this?  Do we need signage for each 3x3 location so people can identify it?  Or is it assumed everyone will have a GPS with good enough accuracy to locate the appropriate square?

Chris Donohue, GISP

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DarrenWiens2
MVP Honored Contributor

I think you're using the term "address" too... traditionally. Each w3w "address" is nothing more than a 3m x 3m (ish) 2d square. It doesn't apply to multistory buildings the way mailing addresses do. I can't imagine that this is intended to function as either mailing or navigational addresses. It's just an interesting way to describe a location, rather than attempting to memorize a lat/long coordinate pair.

Actually, the resolution is such that you could use the w3w address as destination points for routing. For example, meet me at the door at "event.boom.text' not the door at "bright.cotton.props". The w3w API really only has two functions, w3w to lat/long and back again, so this is every bit as possible as routing using Google Maps, etc.

GIS-Cambria
Occasional Contributor II

With the W3W service and API I think just being able to access W3W in an app can assist in locating an address and help with emergency services. If a caller says I'm at wrench.water.leaf then a dispatcher should be able to find that. At the least W3W will be part of our dispatching app.

@Chris D and anyone else stating the vertical element: I contacted W3W and proposed they add a 4th ID to their spec. The 4th ID can be meter based and identify the height (use a - sign in front for below surface). A quad of info is just as easily parsed as a triplet, and the numeric part based on meter is easily 3D and converted to whatever local measurement. For example: wrench.water.leaf.4 is 4 meters above ground. Simple, easily parsed, and probably very quick to add/code into W3W. HOWEVER: when I spoke with someone from W3W about this they stated that so far the need for 3D was not significant?? Really W3W?