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Friday, June 10, 2022

Gecoding Systems: What3Words

 Had the need to look at alternative geocoding systems and came upon 'What3Words' in a closer look at Apple Maps, which supports the method.   This allows the encoding of every square meter of the earth onto a three word code.   See also the wikipedia  article on the method, See also related Amazon App.  Clever idea.  

Geocoding System

What3words  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words 

Part of the What3Words grid on the Palace of Westminster showing typical words and their pseudorandom distribution

Trade name what3words:     Founded 2013; 9 years ago

Website www.what3words.com

What3words is a proprietary geocode system designed to identify any location with a resolution of about 3 metres (9.8 ft). It is owned by What3words Limited, based in London, England. The system encodes geographic coordinates into three permanently fixed dictionary words. For example, the front door of 10 Downing Street in London is identified by ///slurs.this.shark.[1]

What3words differs from most location encoding systems in that it uses words rather than strings of numbers or letters, and the pattern of this mapping is not obvious; the algorithm mapping locations to words is proprietary and protected by copyright.[2]

The company has a website, apps for iOS and Android, and an API for bidirectional conversion between what3words addresses and latitude/longitude coordinates.  .... '

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