What is What3Words?
Aiming to identify new and innovative ways to make location procedures more efficient in sectors such as logistics by optimizing deliveries based on routes, for those of you who do not know this company, let us tell you that these are the pillars on which they are based. its services and its main capabilities.
What3Words technology is based on a global address system, in turn based on the premise that every person and every place has an address. This technology makes it easy to talk about location, by using a location mechanism that is primarily based on dividing the world into a 3m x 3m grid and assigning each tile a unique three-word address. This means that anyone can accurately find any place and share it faster, easier and with less ambiguity than any other system.
The service can be used via free mobile applications or via maps using a Web Viewer. It can also be integrated into any other application, platform, or website, with just a few lines of code.
Why What3Words?
Postal addresses can be imprecise or ambiguous: there are countries where street names are repeated, many parts of the world simply do not have addresses, from low-income urban neighborhoods and informal settlements, to a park where you agreed to meet your friends at, the precise location where you are waiting for the taxi, etc.
Integration APIs
Through the What3Words APIs published in the cloud, you can easily integrate services into web and mobile applications. These services allow you to convert three word addresses into GPS coordinates and vice versa.
If geographic coordinates are already being used in the business logic of the organization’s GIS applications to locate assets (regardless of coordinate systems, since conversions can be made), then this API can convert these into the three-word addresses, which will provide systems and users with a friendlier way to communicate (asset) locations accurately and easily, with three unique words. These words will be different depending on the language.
Product licensing
The integration API has a free-use tier just like Google’s, from which it will only start charging for its services after the first 1,000 API calls (per month) to convert the word code ////word.word. word into a geographical coordinate (GPS).
After these first thousand requests, this is calculated for each API call you make, moving to an initial licensing model of $45 per month. The prices will depend on the registered or expected use per month, and you will need to check the different commercial levels for a greater use and functionality.
Direct geocoding is the conversion of ////word.word.word into a GPS coordinate, using the online integration API. In principle, it seems that there is no charge for reverse geocoding, converting a GPS coordinate into a three-word address, as long as it is done within reasonable use.
Links of interest
We will next list some interesting links about What3Words technology:
- Example of starting the What3Words map by performing a search directly on the words encontró.molida.mote.
- What3Words app on iTunes and Google Play.
- Online API.
- SDK for mobile devices and other platforms.
- GIS Plugins: ArcGIS Locator and QGIS Plugin.
- Conversion through batch processes.
It is also interesting to take a look at the business-specific What3Words page, where we can find use cases depending on the sector (automotive, transport, travel, logistics) and news related to the use of this technology.
Finally, so that we can see that this has its uses, we link you to an interesting news item where it is explained how the company Ambulance Tasmania rescues an injured hiker with What3Words in Tasmania, Australia.
Header image: what3words.com
YouTube: what3words | About us
✍🏻 Author(s)
