A New Means of Record Location Placement >>

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SteveMcBill
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A New Means of Record Location Placement >>

Post by SteveMcBill »

A New Means of Record Location Placement ??

Should we perhaps be considering this mechanism as another means of encoding the physical location/placement of biodiversity records - it provides a means of identifying ANY 3 metre x 3 metre square anywhere on the whole planet. A high degree of accuracy (better than an 8-fig GR) and not purely associated with just Great Britain.

http://what3words.com/about

Your thoughts would be VERY welcome.

Cheers.
Steve

RachelMC
Posts: 460
Joined: Mon May 17, 2010 1:04 pm
Location: Chester

Re: A New Means of Record Location Placement >>

Post by RachelMC »

It's an interesting approach, but personally I don't see it catching on. The location reference appears only to identify a 3mx3m square and is not expandable to say, a one kilometre square or greater. The description mentions a "One word location" which people can buy*

Also, it's my feeling that most people currently using the generally recognised Grid reference numerical system do so because there is a scientific basis to it which accords with their sense of order and data rationality. Using three arbitrary words to identify a location will probably not greatly appeal to data rational people. The type of people who would most likely use the "word" system are those inclined to be "visual thinkers" who reference thoughts by picturing objects, or in this case words and their associated imagery.

Most biodiversity recorders (in my view) are likely to be data rational, methodical and analytical. They prefer logical systems. While the underlying basis of W3W obviously has a logic, the arbitrariness of the word identifiers seems to detract from any logic face validity.

There will no doubt be some studies to support all this but i can't reference them - this is just based on my observations.

What3words is clever and sounds like a bit of fun. *Plus the ceators are in it to make some money - people, organisations, etc can purchase their exclusive one word location name. I doubt it will catch on, but I said that about punk music.
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