"What3words"- novel geographic website

[Longcol 604]

I assume emergency services will still rely on maps / sat navs / gps co-ordinates to find their way to help.totally.lost or wherever, plus need a map overlay for example for mountain rescue to identify type of terrain in vicinity  eg scree slope, peat bog etc.

[altus 540]

1 hour ago, Longcol said:

I assume emergency services will still rely on maps / sat navs / gps co-ordinates to find their way to help.totally.lost or wherever, plus need a map overlay for example for mountain rescue to identify type of terrain in vicinity  eg scree slope, peat bog etc.

Yes they will.

 

This system doesn't actually provide more accuracy than a phone's GPS can - it gets it's location information using GPS after all. The real benefit is that it's very easy to read out GPS coordinates wrongly (or copy them down wrongly at the other end) and those sorts of transcription errors are far less likely with three words. I would hope they've picked words that are unlikely to be readily confused with each other.

[Longcol 604]

1 hour ago, altus said:

Yes they will.

 

This system doesn't actually provide more accuracy than a phone's GPS can - it gets it's location information using GPS after all. The real benefit is that it's very easy to read out GPS coordinates wrongly (or copy them down wrongly at the other end) and those sorts of transcription errors are far less likely with three words. I would hope they've picked words that are unlikely to be readily confused with each other.

Not 100% convinced of that seeing as police / emergency services often use the phonetic alphabet to ensure clear transcription of words but no equivalent needed for 0-9.

 

And just having had a look at it locally - all the words are english - not sure how this is going to pan out here in France (or anywhere else english isn't the first language). Evaluator.Anguished.Festoon unlikely to replace "Les Battuts" for the farm over the road.

Edited August 18, 2019 by Longcol

[altus 540]

11 minutes ago, Longcol said:

Not 100% convinced of that seeing as police / emergency services often use the phonetic alphabet to ensure clear transcription of words but no equivalent needed for 0-9.

The general public don't usually know the phonetic alphabet. This is more about avoiding reading things in the wrong order - remember an OS map reference from a GPS will have 10 digits. Compared to three words, that's far more likely to be relayed wrongly.

 

And just having had a look at it locally - all the words are english - not sure how this is going to pan out here in France (or anywhere else english isn't the first language).

I suspect any given country's emergency services will be able to understand mispronounced English words by that country's population.

[Longcol 604]

4 minutes ago, altus said:

I suspect any given country's emergency services will be able to understand mispronounced English words by that country's population.

I wonder how often they come across evaluator.anguished,festoon? 

 

Hardly words in everyday english use.

[altus 540]

11 minutes ago, Longcol said:

I wonder how often they come across evaluator.anguished,festoon? 

 

Hardly words in everyday english use.

They'd both tend to mispronounce it in the same way. Besides which, a different language version would be just a matter of changing the word table. It would be easy to produce localised versions.

[Longcol 604]

4 minutes ago, altus said:

They'd both tend to mispronounce it in the same way. Besides which, a different language version would be just a matter of changing the word table. It would be easy to produce localised versions.

France - even more so than the UK - has many different dialects - simple example - round here in the Pays d'Oc, yes is pronounced "oc" as opposed to "oui".  The chances of mispronunciation are many and varied.

 

As for localised versions, the Swiss use about 4 different languages, Belgium has at least 2, Catalonia and the Basque country would more than likely need bi-lingual versions, perhaps the same in parts of Wales and the Republic of Ireland. And that's just a little corner of Europe I'm half familiar with.

 

 

 

[altus 540]

22 minutes ago, Longcol said:

France - even more so than the UK - has many different dialects - simple example - round here in the Pays d'Oc, yes is pronounced "oc" as opposed to "oui".  The chances of mispronunciation are many and varied.

 

As for localised versions, the Swiss use about 4 different languages, Belgium has at least 2, Catalonia and the Basque country would more than likely need bi-lingual versions, perhaps the same in parts of Wales and the Republic of Ireland. And that's just a little corner of Europe I'm half familiar with.

So maybe it's not suitable for those countries then. The UK emergency services seem to think it's useful for the UK - which is after all what this thread was resurrected to talk about.

 

[Longcol 604]

14 minutes ago, altus said:

So maybe it's not suitable for those countries then. The UK emergency services seem to think it's useful for the UK - which is after all what this thread was resurrected to talk about.

 

The manafacturers appear to think it can be applied worldwide rather than just the UK.

 

Yes - I can see it has uses and has saved lives . It's application would appear to be far less than universal however.

 

Wonder how it manages tall buildings for example, when many floors will have the.same.coordinates.

Edited August 18, 2019 by Longcol

[Obelix 11]

Generally speaking each floor as a seperate numebr...

[Longcol 604]

44 minutes ago, Obelix said:

Generally speaking each floor as a seperate numebr...

So is there any advanage in saying to emergency services flat 12, floor 18, llama.infotech,ulysses over flat 12, floor 18,  Netherthorpe Towers?

[Robin-H 11]

10 hours ago, Longcol said:

So is there any advanage in saying to emergency services flat 12, floor 18, llama.infotech,ulysses over flat 12, floor 18,  Netherthorpe Towers?

I don't think anyone is suggesting it would replace conventional location information in those instances. It is useful when telling someone your location is not as easy.