NAC is on a mission to "revolutionize" addresses the world over.Eight characters, using a proprietary system developed by NAC, would identify all locations currently identified by addresses in the world.You can geocode your address at NAC's website for free, and get directions to other NAC-geocoded addresses.Partners such as Microsoft's MapPoint Web Service and others are using this technology.
For those of us occupying this industry who have spent significant time working on geocoding issues (dare we even say "problems"?), the idea of simplifying the whole address issue is quite attractive.One interesting twist is that this technology could have a great impact in the developing countries, where traditional addressing schemes are less entrenched - so like the cell phone industry which found an early market in places where there wasn't a good land-based infrastructure, NAC also finds acceptance for their addressing alternative in places like the country of Somaliland, where farm boundaries are being recorded in the official cadastre using NAC's technology.
Some changes are so revolutionary that it's difficult to see how they could ever be implemented.I guess NAC's technology strikes me as being something that we won't see taking over the world right away.But there are some pretty interesting applications already in place, and more to come.So there is the opportunity that small incremental changes will eventually add up.Only time will tell.
Dr.
Xinhang Shen was educated at Shanghai Jiao Tong University of China and
the Royal Institute of Technology of Sweden, obtaining degrees in Naval
Architecture (B.E.), Fluid Mechanics (M.S.), and Computational Fluid Dynamics
(Ph.D.).He worked as an engineer, research associate and software engineer
at a research institute, at the University of Toronto and at an IT company
before he founded NAC Geographic Products Inc.in 1995 to promote the Natural
Area Coding System, and is president and CEO.He is a Canadian citizen
and lives in Toronto.
Nora Parker (NP):
We understand that the methodology for generating the 8- or 10-digit universal
addresses is proprietary, but please tell us as much as you can about how
it works.
Xinhang Shen (XS): As the world enters into the digital era and the GPS technology is becoming more accurate and affordable, people start to use accurate and complete location information instead of street addresses.However, current longitude/latitude and other geographic coordinates have too many digits for consumers to represent the locations of houses, stores, camping sites, etc in their daily lives.
This
problem has been solved by the Natural Area Coding System.Based on the
fact that all points can be represented by relatively small areas, the
system introduces a unified highly efficient representation called Natural
Area Code (NAC) to represent both an area and a point.Natural Area Codes
are defined by a series of grids applied on the earth surface called NAC
Grids or Universal Map Grids.There are unlimited numbers of NAC grids
defined with cell sizes ranging from thousand kilometers to one meter,
a few centimeters or even small sizes.A two character NAC is a cell on
the first level NAC Grid and can specify an area with width/length about
1000 kilometers like a province; a four character NAC is a cell on the
second level NAC Grid and can specify a area with width/length about 30
kilometers like a city; a six-character NAC is a cell on the third level
NAC Grid and can uniquely specify a square kilometer area in the world;
an eight or ten character NAC (also called a Universal Address) is a cell
on the fourth or fifth level NAC Grid with width/length about 30 meters
or one meter respectively.
A Universal Address can
be used to replace a street address on location based services such as
driving directions services, to specify a location which can reduce 80%
input characters, extend the services to all locations in the world no
matter whether there are street addresses or not, and make the location
representations language independent.This is even more significant on
wireless devices with small display and keypad on which Universal Addresses
can make both start and end locations of a driving directions service fit
on a single screen.
Natural Area Codes can be
used on all GIS and location based applications to specify areas with any
size, anywhere in the world, for both location based search and map retrieving,
which will make the systems universal unlike ZIP/postal codes, which are
valid only in individual countries, with incomplete coverages.A NAC needs
only very few (two, four or six) characters and can tell both the location
and size of an area, and is much more efficient than using longitude/latitude
coordinates that needs four decimal numbers.
Universal Map Grids can
be printed on all kinds of maps with any projections and scales.The grid
cell coordinates of these maps are always Natural Area Codes.Any location
given as a Universal Address (Natural Area Code) can be directly pinpointed
on these maps, unlike a street address that may take a long time to be
found on a street map.Therefore, Universal Map Grids can significantly
increase the efficiency in using maps for emergency services, tourism,
taxi and delivery services.
Since Universal Addresses
can be converted from or to other geographic coordinates using mathematical
algorithms, they can be directly displayed on GPS receivers without the
need of address databases.This will lead to the birth of time-space watches
with which people can use an accurate Universal Address as important/often
as accurate time for all their daily activities such as recording the accurate
location of an accident, a park bench, a camping site, a fishing spot,
a store, a restaurant, a hotel, a gathering place, etc.
Universal Addresses can
also be marked on street signs to help tourists find their destinations
because comparing two Universal Addresses can immediately help figure out
the approximate distance and direction is between the two locations.If
all street signs in a city are marked with Universal Addresses, tourists
will be able to travel around the city easily even without tourist guides
and maps.
Universal Addresses can
also be used as Universal Property Identifiers to represent individual
buildings, houses, gates, doors, bus stops, wells, fire hydrants, electric
wire poles, street lights, sewage exits, trees, parking meters, camping
sites, fishing spots, emergency locations, and all other fixed objects
on the earth.Using Universal Property Identifiers instead of computer-generated
serial numbers to represent these objects can make these databases easily
exchange information and merge without the problems caused by duplicate
identifiers.Universal Property Identifiers are always well aligned, and
people can directly tell the spatial relationship between them, unlike
computer-generated numbers that do not have any meanings.Universal Property
Identifiers can also be pinpointed on all maps with Universal Map Grids
directly without the help of computers, and can be navigated to with GPS
receivers.
Universal
Addresses can be used as Global Postal Codes to sort both domestic and
international mail from the world level to the final mailboxes.Eight character
Universal Addresses already have the highest resolution in all ZIP/postal
codes used in the world.Using Global Postal Codes to sort mail or parcels
can also optimize the delivery routes because they have included all the
accurate location information of the destination, unlike other ZIP/postal
codes that just represent the internal delivery structure of postal services.
Universal Addresses can
also be used as a meta tag for all web pages which provide location sensitive
information and/or services.Using a NAC meta tag instead of longitude/latitude
coordinates based meta tag can make the location tag simpler and clearer
and also make the tag easy to sort, search and store.The introduction
of NAC meta tags will create a new world wide web for location based search
engines.
Universal Addresses can
be used to create Universal Photo Identifiers that consist of two parts:
location (ten character Universal Address) and time (year_month_date_hour_minute_second)
such as: 8CNJK_Q8ZGF-2004-09-03-14-02-59.jpg.Such Universal Photo Identifiers
will never be duplicated, and worldwide photographic databases can be easily
established and all photographs taken in the world can be efficiently sorted,
stored and retrieved.
NP: What industries/companies
are adopting this methodology and why? How are they implementing it?
XS: The Natural Area Coding System (including the Universal Address System, the Global Postal Code System and the Universal Property Identifier System) has been widely adopted:
· Somaliland has adopted
the system as the national standard for addresses, postal codes and property
identifiers;
· TravelGIS uses
the Natural Area Codes and Universal Addresses throughout all its applications
including the locations of hotels, restaurants, and many other tourist
attractions, real-time mapping services, Global Vehicle Tracking System,
and Driving Directions Service;
· MLBS.NET uses Natural
Area Codes to specify areas for wireless location based business searches
and map retrieving and real-time traffic information, and uses Universal
Addresses to specify locations for its wireless driving directions service;
· GeoDiving uses
Universal Addresses to represent the locations of underwater wreckages;
· SafeAngel uses
Universal Addresses as efficient location representations for its wireless
location service middleware;
· Lupine Logic uses
the Universal Addresses as digital image identifiers and to specify locations/areas
on its coyotEYE product; and
· Zeitgeist Data
Management uses the Universal Addresses as oil well identifiers and to
specify locations for its driving directions service.
NP: I think many
readers are intrigued with the idea of universal addresses and geocodes,
but most people wouldn't even consider undertaking such an effort because
of how difficult it would be to get such a change universally accepted.
The barriers to implementing such a system are surely more cultural than
technical.Can you comment on that?
XS: It's true that many people are just observing instead of adopting the Universal Address System because they think there are large cultural barriers.This is not quite true.Actually, people can directly use the Universal Address System and benefit from the system immediately.We have noticed that there are already many tourist operators using Universal Addresses as part of their addresses to help tourists find their services more efficiently.They add only a few characters of the Universal Address onto your address, but can help their customers find them more efficiently because of the advantages of the Universal Addresses.
Now there already are 19
countries geocoded with the Universal Addresses (http://www.travelgis.com/geocode/).
Many Universal Address powered applications are getting more and more users
such as MLBS.NET, the TravelGIS
Driving Directions Service which can provide driving directions to
19 countries with street addresses and 25 countries with Universal Addresses.
Although the wide adoption of the Universal Address System will not happen
overnight, it will be adopted gradually and grow steadily as shown by more
and more companies approaching us to get more information about the Universal
Address System and negotiate its licensing plans.Therefore, we are very
optimistic to the future of the system, just as Mr.Matt Ball - Editor
of GeoWorld said on an interview with a Globe and Mail journalist:
"This (the Universal Address System) is an elegant solution that seems
to supply something that is becoming necessary as the world becomes more
globalized" and "It's only a matter of time before something like this
will be implemented."
NP: Would it be your
hope that this system would replace addresses commonly used to deliver
mail, or only used in "background" applications such as routing and LBS
applications?
XS: We don't expect
Universal Addresses to completely replace street addresses in the world
because the long time established traditional address systems won't go
away easily.We encourage people to add the Universal Address as a complementary
part of their address so that other people can take the advantages of the
Universal Address if they know how to use it or simply ignored it if they
don't know.Typical applications that can take the advantages of Universal
Addresses immediately are wireless driving directions services, navigations
systems and location based search engines.If Universal Addresses are put
on mail envelopes, postal and courier services can use them to sort mail
more efficiently.This can make the transition from conventional addresses
to Universal Addresses smoothly.
The major advantage of Universal
Addresses is its simplicity for human brains to remember and digest.Therefore,
Universal Addresses won't be run only in the background.They will be widely
used on human-to-human media (news and documents) and human-to-machine
interfaces.
NP: What is the role
of the NAC Society, and how effective
has it been in getting the Natural Area Coding system adopted? If someone
wanted to join, how would they go about doing so?
XS: The International
NAC Society is a non-profit organization to promote the applications of
the Natural Area Coding System for non-profit activities in the world.
It has played an important role in promoting the Natural Area Coding System.
It welcomes all people interested in the system to join.There are two
kinds of membership: informed members and voting members.It is free to
become an informed member while a voting member has to pay certain membership
fee.To become a member, you can simply fill in the form.
NP: How long has
NAC been in existence?
XS: The Natural Area
Coding System was developed in 1994 and has been almost ten years.The
initial purpose was to unite the postal code systems in the world.As the
research was going on, we realized that sizeless points used in geography
do not exist and are not able to be represented accurately either.It's
an unwise approach to use such representations.Thus, we introduced a representation
to represent only an area.This representation can naturally represent
a geographic point when its represented area is relative small.Therefore,
it can represent both an area and a point because in the real world a point
is always an area no matter how small it is.This approach has unified
the representations of both areas and points, which significantly increases
the power of the area and location representations.We think this is a
theoretical breakthrough in geography, and also in mathematics.
During the early days, there
were very few address databases available and GPS receivers were expensive
and had poor accuracy, which made the system difficult to use.Recently,
as the address databases were gradually established in many countries,
many online and wireless location based services start operating and GPS
becomes more affordable, more accurate and smaller, the Natural Area Coding
System gets the steam to take off.
Now, all kinds of GPS receivers, including GPS phones, GPS watches, handheld GPS receivers and GPS cameras can implement the capability to display Universal Addresses and make the Universal Addresses as useful as time.All kinds of maps in any scales and any map projections can include the Universal Map Grids to produce the same grid coordinates - Natural Area Codes.
All location-based services
can implement the Universal Address System.All geographic information
systems can be powered by the Natural Area Coding System.Therefore, the
Natural Area Coding System will eliminate all the gaps between longitude/latitude,
UTM, street addresses, postal codes, map grids and area codes, and unite
the representations of locations and areas of all geographic products,
services and systems into one highly efficient code for both consumers
and professionals, and both human brains and computers.