Hi Paul, Yes, that would be very nice indeed.
Reading the article, I'm not sure what they're going to do when the streets really aren't named, or when you need to specify a location that isn't near a street. There's a mention of mapping landmarks but those are tough to geocode and search for. (I sit near our geocoding team who have been working on landmark-based addressing for various parts of the world.) Their wiki page mentions a launch party in London in November, but there's no other information. Do you know if it's going ahead? Anyone on this list? Doug On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 2:57 PM, Paul Naylor < paul.nay...@ordnancesurvey.co.uk> wrote: > Hi Doug, > > > > Have you seen this project? > > > > > http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/oct/06/missing-maps-human-genome-project-unmapped-cities?CMP=twt_gu > > > > The work you are doing could tie nicely in with what they are trying to > achieve? > > > > Regards, > > > > *Paul Naylor* > > *Cartographic Design Consultant* > > *Ordnance Survey* > > Adanac Drive, SOUTHAMPTON, United Kingdom, SO16 0AS > > Phone: +44 (0) 23 8005 5143 > > www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk | paul.nay...@ordnancesurvey.co.uk > > *Please consider your environmental responsibility before printing this > email.* > > *From:* Geowanking [mailto:geowanking-boun...@geowanking.org] *On Behalf > Of *Doug Rinckes > *Sent:* 29 October 2014 13:53 > *To:* geowanking@geowanking.org > *Subject:* [Geowanking] Location address codes > > > > Hello geowankers > > I'm an engineer at Google, and I have just open sourced a geo project > we've been working on for a while. > > > > I used to work on our maps, detecting missing road networks and in my > spare time mapping roads in Papua New Guinea, Central and West Africa from > the satellite imagery. But without street names or addresses, a road > network isn't all that useful. People can't use it for directions, because > they can't express where they want directions to. After talking with > colleagues from around the world, I discovered that's it actually very > common for streets to be unnamed. That means that we can't get the names > from government agencies, streetview or user edits - because there are no > names to get. > > > > We thought that we should provide short codes that could be used like > addresses, to give the location of homes, businesses, anything. If we made > them usable from smartphones, we can make addresses for anywhere available > to anyone with a smartphone pretty much immediately. > > > > We had some specific requirements, including that these address codes > should work offline, they shouldn't spell words or include easily confused > characters. We wanted to be able to look at two codes and tell if they are > near each other, and estimate the direction and even the distance. The > codes should not be generated by a single provider, because what do you do > when they disappear? Finally, it had to be open sourced. > > > > Open sourcing the project was important. We wanted to allow everyone to > evaluate it so that we don't go implementing something that turns out to > not be useful. If it does turn out to be useful, everyone (including other > mapping providers) should be able to implement it and use the codes freely. > > > > I'm pre-announcing this to a couple of geo lists today, and I'll be > sticking around for comments and questions. The following links provide > more information: > > > > Github project: https://github.com/google/open-location-code > > Demonstration website: http://plus.codes > > Discussion list: > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/open-location-code > > > > Enjoy! > > > > Doug > > > This email is only intended for the person to whom it is addressed and may > contain confidential information. If you have received this email in error, > please notify the sender and delete this email which must not be copied, > distributed or disclosed to any other person. > > Unless stated otherwise, the contents of this email are personal to the > writer and do not represent the official view of Ordnance Survey. Nor can > any contract be formed on Ordnance Survey's behalf via email. We reserve > the right to monitor emails and attachments without prior notice. > > Thank you for your cooperation. > > Ordnance Survey > Adanac Drive > Southampton SO16 0AS > Tel: 03456 050505 > http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk >
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