Woking, Surrey 27th April 2016 – Aligned Assets are pleased to announce the introduction of what3words into their gazetteer products.
What is what3words?
what3words (link) is a simple way to communicate a precise location based on a global grid of 57 trillion 3 meter x 3 meter squares. Each square has a pre-allocated fixed and unique 3 word address.
For example, the 3 word address for the front door of the what3words office West London is index.home.raft. Aligned Assets office in Woking is at fresh.parent.apple.
Why are 3 word addresses useful?
Whilst latitude/longitude coordinates are accurate they very hard for regular people to use. Transcribing and communicating long strings of numbers like 51.521049, 0.202721 is prone to error and prohibits their widespread use beyond the geospatial community.
Street addressing is not universal or accurate and there are numerous locations that need to be recorded which are not covered. These include electricity substations, bus shelters, advertising hoardings and telephone boxes.
A way to refer to these assets is needed, so people often end up allocating a name such as “ELECTRICITY SUB STATION 16M FROM PREMIER INN, READERS QUAY, 36M FROM ALBERT ROAD” which is unwieldy, inaccurate and difficult to communicate. A 3 word address is both a unique identifier and a precise location, accurate to 3 meters. It is much easier to use “ELECTRICITY SUB STATION AT BLUNT.KEEPS.FILM”.
Using 3 word addresses with the Aligned Asset product range
Aligned Assets will be able to automatically generate and store the 3 word address for any address held in its Gazetteers. This includes Symphony iManage, Bluelight and International.
The 3 word address can then be viewed, searched for and updated within the products mentioned above. Our SinglePoint search engine will also enable the 3 word address to be used to search for land and property by linking it with AddressBase Premium and the LLPG.
ABOUT ALIGNED ASSETS
Aligned Assets (www.aligned-assets.co.uk) are an industry leader in AddressBase, gazetteer and address management solutions. They supply software across the public and private sectors including over 100 Local Authorities, Fire & Rescue Services and Police Forces. In addition to software and data solutions, they offer a complete range of consultancy, training, bespoke development and project management.
ABOUT THE what3words
Launched in 2013, what3words (http://what3words.com/) is a global grid of 57 trillion 3mx3m squares. Each square has a 3 word address that can be communicated quickly, easily and with no ambiguity. Our geocoder turns geographic coordinates into these 3 word addresses and vice-versa.
Using words means non-technical people can accurately find any location and communicate it more quickly, more easily and with less ambiguity than any other system like street addresses, postcodes, latitude & longitude or mobile short-links.