[OSGeo-Discuss] Short codes for locations

[Cameron Shorter]

Hi Doug,
An interesting and potentially useful concept.
It sounds like you are proposing a spatial standard. Have you approached 
the Open Geospatial Consortium about getting the standard endorsed?

With regards to any code which you wish to produce and open source, I 
suggest considering bringing it under the umbrella of the Open Source 
Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).
Details about OSGeo incubation here:
http://www.osgeo.org/incubator


On 30/10/2014 1:08 am, Doug Rinckes wrote:
> 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.
>
> 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 <http://plus.codes/>
> Discussion list: 
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/open-location-code 
> <https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21forum/open-location-code>
>
> Enjoy!
>
> Doug
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

-- 
Cameron Shorter,
Software and Data Solutions Manager
LISAsoft
Suite 112, Jones Bay Wharf,
26 - 32 Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont NSW 2009

P +61 2 9009 5000,  W www.lisasoft.com,  F +61 2 9009 5099

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