Brochure - English

“THIS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BECOME A NEW GLOBAL

STANDARD”

Robert Barr OBEProfessor of Geography, Manchester University

CONTENTS

02

03

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06

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09

3 WORDS TO CHANGE THE WORLD

ISN’T THE WORLD ADDRESSED ALREADY?

OUR TECHNOLOGY

BUSINESS MODEL

3 EXAMPLE USE CASES

PARTNERS

BEHIND THE IDEA

Page 02 / 10what3words | Addressing the world

what3words is a global addressing system based on a grid of 57 trillion 3mx3m squares.

Each square has been allocated a unique, fixed 3 word address.

Our algorithm turns latitude and longitude coordinate pairs into these 3 words & vice-versa.

Words are easier to remember and use than any other available system.

We have our own app & web service but also provide an API & SDK for businesses and developers to integrate our technology.

Around the world individuals, companies & organisations are using it to enhance their own products and services with simple and precise addressing.

With what3words everyone and everywhere now has a simple address.

3 WORDS TO CHANGE THE WORLD

51.498262,-0.218533

=

“THE BEST NAVIGATION IDEA SINCE THE TUBE MAP.”

Rory Sutherland, The Spectator


Unbanked, unconnected & unaddressed

Around 75% of the world - over 135 countries - suffer from inconsistent, complicated or inadequate addressing systems.

This means that around 4 billion people are invisible; unable to get deliveries or receive aid; unable to report crime; and unable to exercise many of their rights as citizens because they simply have no way to communicate where they live.

It means that in remote locations water facilities can’t be found, monitored and fixed; and schools, refugee camps and informal settlements remain unaddressed.

Many developing nations are well on the way to solving two recognized barriers to development; being unconnected & unbanked. However being unaddressed is a also key barrier for getting finance, setting up small businesses, ecommerce and countrywide social & economic development.

Frustrating & costly

Even in countries with advanced address systems, people get lost, packages aren’t delivered, and businesses and tourist attractions don’t get found.

Poor addressing is costly & annoying in some developed countries, but around the world it hampers the growth and development of nations, ultimately costing lives.

Addressing for the 21st Century

The geospatial industry is worth an estimated $150bn annually. Yet there is no precise global address or location reference system that can be used easily by everyone.

Lat,long does provide a precise location reference and whilst this is great for machines it is ineffective for people as they are impossible to remember, and errors in understanding, transcription, and communication make widespread use prohibitive.

ISN’T THE WORLD ADDRESSED ALREADY?

“THE LACK OF A COMPLETE, CORRECT AND UNIQUE NATIONAL ADDRESSING SYSTEM CONSTITUTES A MAJOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHALLENGE FOR A NUMBER OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES.”

Universal Postal Union


Words beat numbers and letters

Using words means non-technical people can find any location accurately and communicate it more quickly, more easily and with less ambiguity than any other system like street addresses, postcodes, latitude & longitude or mobile short-links.

People’s ability to immediately remember 3 words is near perfect whilst your ability to remember the 16 numbers, decimal points and N/S/E/W prefixes, that are required to define the same location using lat,long is zero.

Short and easy words

Each what3words language is powered by a wordlist of 25,000 - 40,000 dictionary words. The wordlists go through multiple automated and human processes before being sorted by an algorithm that takes into account word length, distinctiveness, frequency, and ease of spelling and pronunciation.

Offensive words and homophones (sale & sail) have been removed. Simpler, more common words are allocated to more populated areas and the longest words are used in less populated areas.

OUR TECHNOLOGY

Human friendly precision

Latitude and longitude is the basis for our system. 3 word addresses convert directly to lat,long and vice-versa.

Lat,long is great for computers and should always be used at the back end, but what3words is useful when people are involved: either people-to-people, people-to-device or device-to-people. what3words can revolutionise the human side of the experience for everyone.

Tiny algorithm The what3words system works via an algorithm as opposed to a database, meaning that the what3words core technology is contained with a file around 10MB in size, as opposed to what would otherwise have been an unmanageably large c. 20,000TB database.

One major benefit to the tiny size is that the what3words technology can comfortably fit in a modern smartphone using negligible disk space.


Built-in error detection

The what3words algorithm actively shuffles similar-sounding 3 word combinations around the world to enable both human and automated intelligent error-checking (e.g. table.chair.lamp & table.chair.lamps are on different continents).

Therefore if you enter a 3 word address incorrectly, the location will be so far away from your intended point that it will be immediately obvious.

Fixed and universal

The what3words system is fixed and it is impossible to change it. There is 100% certainty that all instances of the system running everywhere in the world will provide the same 3 word address for the same location.

One uniform word-based system for everyone eliminates the confusion caused by multiple conflicting numeric and alphanumeric codes.

In everyone’s language

We have rolled out our 3 word address system in 8 languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German, Turkish & Swedish. We are adding to those every month and are currently working on Italian, Greek, Arabic, Swahili and more.

The 3 word address in one language is not a translation of the 3 words used in a different language version.

You can choose the 3 word language that we display 3 word addresses to you in, but you never have to tell us what language you are inputting the 3 word addresses in: we will recognise the language automatically.

Offline capability

what3words functions without a data connection. This solves a perpetual constraint when in remote areas with poor connectivity.

Independent technical evaluation

“what3words is an innovative hybrid geo-referencing system that uses words rather than numbers or alphanumeric codes to accurately reference any location on the surface of the earth.

The system is non-hierarchical because all the units referenced are the same size, there is no need to interpret the code to know what size of area is being referenced, it is always the same.

The system is also non-topological - the three words used to reference any square on the earth’s surface are not dependent on the three words to reference any of the adjacent squares. This makes what3words one of the cleanest and simplest geographical references to understand.

No other geographical referencing system offers such clean simplicity of concept.”

Robert Barr OBEProfessor of Geography, Manchester University

table.chair.lamps

table.chair.lamp


A key ingredient for businesses

what3words is a plug-in for businesses and individuals to add simple and precise addressing to their own products and services.

This can:

• Improve customer experience for mapping/navigation/tourism/travel business

• Drive efficiencies for delivery & logistics companies

• Enable growth for ecommerce & banking entities

• Improve & help save lives for governments, NGOs and charitable organisations.

Doing good by doing business

The business model is based around charging for access to the API or SDK and we are signing commercial agreements with clients, partners & distributors.

what3words will always be free for individuals to use on their own site and apps. We also intend to support fair and equitable use. We employ a structure that provides qualifying organisations, including humanitarian and not-for-profit entities, with a range of free and discounted usage plans.

Our API, SDK, code libraries and examples are all available on developer.what3words.com.

BUSINESS MODEL

“IN MANY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, AS WELL AS IN SOME EMERGING ECONOMIES, THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE AN ADDRESS. YET ADDRESSES ARE AN ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT.”

Universal Postal Union


Humanitarian Aid

Location management is key to the delivery of effective humanitarian or development services.

Knowledge about the precise location of facilities, hazards, resources and boundaries is essential to the delivery of life sustaining support systems for humanitarian field operations, especially in environments that are challenging and unaddressed.

Alphanumeric codes are complex and varied, and there is limited alignment in operational use between countries, companies or agencies.

This means that data collection, the communication of that data and general on-the-ground response all suffer. The use of 3 word addresses makes things far simpler for everyone.

Navigation

People often want to navigate to somewhere that doesn’t have an address (a point in a large national park or a spot on a long uninhabited road), or that has a house name but not a house number.

To compound this, street addresses are often geocoded inaccurately. Sat navs struggle with ambiguity when people enter a search query that has multiple results. For example, there are 8 “Lonsdale Roads” in London, one of the best addressed cities in the world.

what3words can solve these problems as it is precise, unambiguous, and independent of street addressing. If people want to navigate to a house with a name but no number, it will still have 3 words.

Similarly, even individual points in parks or fields will each have 3 word addresses and can be navigated to with ease.

Delivery

Delivery companies want to minimise delays and optimise routes

We make it practical to deliver to businesses and people without addresses, and in areas of poor addressing we increase efficiency. Even in countries with great addressing, deliveries fail, over 6M deliveries a year in the UK have address issues*.

Poor addressing contributes to the last mile problem that accounts for up to 28% of the total cost to move goods.

We can help in the last mile by specifying a precise & fixed location for the whole supply chain to work to.

With what3words, you also don’t have to rely on drivers with local knowledge to make deliveries, so rostering and managing demand is a lot easier.

3 EXAMPLE USE CASES

“THE ‘LAST MILE’ IS OFTEN THE LEAST EFFICIENT LINK IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN, COMPRISING UP TO

28% OF THE TOTAL COST OF THE DELIVERY.”

The Geography of Transport Systems, 2009

what3words being used to deliver packages Rocinha favela, Brazil


PARTNERS


Where exactly shall we meet?

Originally from the music industry the CEO, Chris Sheldrick, spent 10 years organising live music events around the world and constantly faced huge logistical frustrations that came with poor addressing.

Seeking a solution, he talked to a math academic friend about a more usable and less error prone version of the lat,long coordinates that the company had resorted to using. The friend immediately said he could solve the problem with words and wrote

an early version of the algorithm on the back on an envelope.

The company was founded by the pair plus two friends in London in March 2013. what3words released their own app & site in July 2013 and since then technical developments have followed rapidly. The online API was released in November 2013 and the offline SDK in October 2014. In February 2015 Autocorrect (error detection) and Compass (offline navigation) functionality was added. Now 8 people, the company has received $3M of angel funding over the past 18 months.

BEHIND THE IDEA

“FOUR BILLION PEOPLE ARE EXCLUDED FROM THE RULE OF LAW, AS THE LACK OF A LEGAL IDENTITY OFTEN PREVENTS THEM FROM ENJOYING THEIR RIGHTS AS CITIZENS. SETTING UP AN ADDRESSING SYSTEM IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS TACKLING THAT ISSUE.”

Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, United Nations

/ 10what3words | Addressing the world

Brochure - English

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