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Open Location Code

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Open Location Codes are a way of encoding location into a form that is
easier to use than
latitude and longitude. They are designed to be used like street addresses, especially in
places where buildings aren't numbered or streets aren't named.

Stop giving directions

Instead of giving people complicated directions, just give them a short code that tells them
exactly where you want them to go. They can enter it in their
phone, laptop, computer, and
get the exact location. They don't even need to
be online!

Most places just need a six character code and a locality to get an accurate,
unique
reference. For example, this football pitch
in Belo Horizonte, Brazil has the location "Belo
Horizonte 22WM+PW". Try it on
the demo site!

If you don't want to use the locality, you can use the full 10 character code. That
same
football pitch has the full reference 58GR22WM+PW. "58GR" is like an area code
of a
telephone number, and like an area code, if you're in the town (or even near it)
you don't
need it.

Who are these codes for?

Here are three examples of people who could use these codes.

People living in unmapped slum areas, such as Kibera in Nairobi, could

use these codes as a
home or business address. For example, the Adventure Crafts Glassmart in Kibera has the
address
"Stall No.164, Makina Stalls, Kibera Dr, Kibera, Located close to the Toi Market".
That's not easy to find, and the
glass they ordered might be delivered late if at all. But if
they
tell the delivery company that their address was "MQPQ+QG Kibera", they can look it up, get
the exact location, and the glass will
be delivered faster.

Small businesses rely on people being able to find them. This is especially true for guest
houses, because they
are mostly used by people who are not local to the area. If a guest
house provides their location using these codes,
a visitor is able to use that code to go
directly to the location.

Crisis response organisations need accurate location information. These may be existing
buildings (storage warehouses)
or things such as wells that don't have addresses, or
temporary camps that could be long distances from the nearest
road. Latitude and
longitude coordinates are long and prone to errors, leading to wasted time and resources.
Using
short codes that importantly, do not require expensive satellite communications,
could provide such organisations with
improved location information.

I'm a business, can I use the codes?

Of course. The codes are free to get and free to decode. We've got software
libraries on our
Github site, and example web pages. If you need help, you can
contact the mailing list.

That's so cool! Can I help?

Yes! We are working on implementations in other languages, but if you'd like
to do an
implementation, contact the mailing list
and see if anyone else is already working on the
language.

Alternatively, if you know someone who would be interested, let them know.

Why didn't you just use X?

The first thing we did was to work out what attributes of addresses were useful.
Once we
had that list, we looked at a lot of existing location coding methods to
see how well they
matched our list. Once we'd done that, we decided that it was worth
to at least define a new
one, and then see if it was well received.

The other methods were mostly designed with different ideas in mind, and
so this isn't a
criticism of them.

What makes Open Location Codes different?

The codes aren't case sensitive and don't include easily confused characters. We've
selected the
characters to make it difficult to impossible to spell words in any
language.
Codes are generated from latitude and longitude, so they already exist for everywhere.
Nobody has to
set them up or pay for them. Each place has only one code.
Codes that are similar are located closer together than codes that are different.
Open Location Codes represent an area, not a point.
The size of the area depends on the length of the code. Long codes are more accurate
than short
codes.
Dropping characters from the end of a code gives you a larger area that contained the
original code.
Codes are 10 or 11 characters long (8FMGP9FW+6M), but if you're in the local area
(within 50km),
the leading four characters of the code can be omitted (P9FW+6M)
making the codes even shorter.
The short code can be used together with a place name (like P9FW+6M Pisa, Italy).

Point me to the info!

Demonstration site
Mailing list
Comparison of existing location encoding systems
Open Location Code definition

Authors
Open Location Codes were developed at Google's Zurich engineering office, and then open
sourced so that they can be freely used.
The main author is Doug Rinckes (@drinckes), with
the help of lots of colleagues including:
 Philipp Bunge
Aner Ben-Artzi
Jarda Bengl
Prasenjit Phukan
Sacha van Ginhoven

Open Location Code maintained by google

Published with GitHub Pages