what3words

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What3words

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legal form Ltd.
founding 2013
Seat London
Website https://what3words.com/de

what3words is a proprietary system for georeferencing locations with a resolution of three meters. what3words encodes geographic coordinates into three words. For example, the Statue of Liberty is at "///dankt.anlegen.kinosaal" (in English at "///planet.inches.most"). This differs from most other location coding systems in that it displays three words instead of long strings or letters. what3words has a website, apps for iOS and Android and a partly paid programming interface that enables bidirectional conversion of what3words address and latitude / longitude coordinates.

history

Founded by Chris Sheldrick, Jack Waley-Cohen , Mohan Ganesalingam and Michael Dent, what3words started in July 2013. Sheldrick and Ganesalingam originally came up with the idea after Sheldrick struggled to get equipment and bands to venues on time due to insufficient address information during his work as concert promoter bring. The company was founded on March 5, 2013 and filed a patent application for the technology on April 19, 2013.

In March 2016, the company announced that Steve Coast , Founder of OpenStreetMap , had joined the company as Chief Evangelist, responsible for building and strengthening partnerships in North America.

Design principles

what3words lays a grid of 3 by 3 meters over the earth, consisting of 57 trillion squares. This grid also covers places on the earth's surface that do not have a building address such as street and house number. Each of these squares is uniquely identified by a combination of three words (w3w address). These three originally English words are available in a variety of other languages. This enables foreign language users to use the what3words system in their native language, but addresses cannot be translated into another language by translating the individual words.

As of December 2016, w3w addresses (as well as web and iOS app user interfaces) were available in Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Mongolian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish; Plans for a total of 25 languages ​​have been announced.

What3words' English word list is 40,000 words covering the sea and land. Each additional what3words language uses a 25,000 word list to cover the world's land area. The lists go through several automated and human processes before being sorted according to an algorithm that takes into account word length, distinctive character, frequency and ease of spelling and pronunciation. Homophonic and variant spellings are treated to minimize any confusion, and offensive words are removed.

The what3words algorithm distributes similar sounding triple combinations across the world to enable both human and automated error checking. As a result, in the event of a possibly incorrectly entered triple combination, which nevertheless randomly results in a valid w3w reference, this location will be very far away from the user's area. This means that incorrect entries can easily be recognized as such.

The what3words system uses a proprietary algorithm combined with a small database. The core technology of what3words can be implemented with a file of around 10 MB in size.

The most obvious benefit of what3words is that these three words are easy to remember and unambiguous for most everyday and non-technical uses.

The German railway is involved in what3words. Likewise Daimler AG . In addition, Daimler has announced that it will add what3words to its navigation system in Germany. In this regard, it also works with the DPDgroup CEP service .

Postal services

Several states (as of October 2017) have integrated the What3words reference system into their postal system:

criticism

Proponents of open standards sharply criticize the what3words system because it was not published as the proprietary code of a privately run company, but on the contrary, was protected by patent. Another disadvantage is that addresses with similar names are intentionally far apart.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ what3words: 3 word address: dankt.anleger.kinosaal. In: Interactive map. Retrieved September 14, 2017 .
  2. ↑ what3words public API | what3words. Retrieved March 10, 2020 .
  3. ↑ 'What3Words' Wants To Replace postcodes With Words - For The Entire Globe . 2nd of July 2013.
  4. ↑ Location-Pinpointing Startup what3words Sells 10,000+ OneWord Map-Pins In First Week . July 8, 2016.
  5. ↑ what3words team . Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  6. ↑ This App Gives Even the Most Remote Spots on the Planet an Address .
  7. ↑ what3words limited .
  8. ↑ WO2014170646 A METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IDENTIFYING AND COMMUNICATING LOCATIONS .
  9. ^ Anthony Wallace: Founder of OpenStreetMap joins what3words . March 30, 2016. Accessed July 27, 2018.
  10. ↑ what3words hires Steve Coast, founder of OpenStreetMap | GeoConnexion ( en ) Retrieved July 27, 2018.
  11. ↑ Stefan Krempl: Localization by language: Mercedes-Benz relies on a three-word address system. heise online, September 13, 2017, accessed December 30, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Digitization: Deutsche Bahn joins what3words . In: Handelsblatt . April 13, 2017 ( handelsblatt.com [accessed December 30, 2018]).
  13. ↑ what3words: With the DB and three words to any place in the world. In: press release. Deutsche Bahn, August 29, 2017, accessed December 30, 2018 .
  14. ↑ 3-word addresses: Daimler invests in navigation startup What3Words. Gründerszene.de, January 10, 2018.
  15. ↑ Mercedes-Benz is the first automobile manufacturer to use an innovative address system: The world in three words | Global Media Site. In: Mercedes-Benz press release. September 12, 2017, accessed December 30, 2018 .
  16. ↑ dpd.de: Test by Mercedes-Benz Vans, DPD and what3words: Innovative addressing solution for parcel delivery ; accessed on May 30, 2020
  17. ↑ dpd.de: DPD & Mercedes-Benz + 15% delivery efficiency with what3words ; English, accessed May 30, 2020
  18. ↑ Start-up of the week: what3words: Reach your goal in just three words. Automobilwoche.de, October 12, 2017.
  19. ↑ What3words: 'Life-saving app' divides opinion . BBC. September 21, 2019.
  20. ↑ What3Words is quite a find . The Boston Globe. July 1, 2016.
  21. ↑ Leigh Dodds: What 3 Words? Jog on mate! . June 14, 2016.
  22. ↑ What3words . OpenStreetMap wiki. 20th January 2017.