What3Words – The biggest disruption since Google Maps?

I have an addressing problem. The apartment block I live in has a rear entry for visitor parking. It doesn’t have a street number. I direct guests to the right alley, and then make them call me, so I can tell them which garage door to access. I am usually in the middle of cooking something complex when they ring.

Until recently, the only alternative I had for directing guests to the right spot was “-33.884891, 151.217647”, and hope they can remember and interpret these numbers. Good luck with that. (I’m not even mentioning datums or projections, or visitors who don’t know what to do with GPS coordinates)

Chris Sheldrick

Three months ago I spoke with a young Briton named Chris Sheldrick. He used to work as an event manager, organising festivals and the like, and was paying people to meet delivery trucks at the edge of town, and explain to drivers exactly where to park, drop the chairs, or unload the catering.

Chris wondered why there wasn’t a simple, clear-cut, easy to remember system to communicate location in natural language. Addresses don’t work if there isn’t a property or building to address, and coordinates are hard to remember or interpret.

That’s why Chris created What3Words (http://what3words.com/; available for IOS and Android), and it’s now taking the world by storm.

Major Policy Breakthroughs Announced at Spatial@Gov 2012

The first day of this year’s Spatial@Gov conference saw two major government policy announcements: the establishment of a National Foundation Spatial Data Framework, and the imminent whole-of-government licence of PSMA’s Geocoded National Address File (G-NAF).

The National Foundation Spatial Data Framework defines the ten data themes that form the authoritative geographic data layers that underpin other data and decision making. The policy recognises these as so critical that government will focus its energy and resources on ensuring its authoritative, reliable supply.

The whole-of-government G-NAF licence means that individual departments no longer need to separately get a G-NAF licence, saving a lot of money and greatly extending its potential utilisation. It is my hope that this could extend beyond government as well.

PSMA, Sensis or OpenStreetMap: what makes Spatial Data “Authoritative”?

You are probably aware that recently in Australia, Google switched map data providers. They ditched the government owned data provider PSMA in favour of Sensis' Whereis, and this data will (at least in part) be maintained by users themselves.


The switch has created a bit of a stir in the Australian spatial information community. Our industry association (SIBA) sent out a stern word of warning about authoritative data and the risks of dealing with User Generated Content (UGC).