25 July 2014
East Africa: Technology Could See East Africa's Most Remote Areas Pinpointed
THE region's most remote areas could in the future be mapped with a new way of pinpointing locations on a map.
Launched last Friday, the technology will allow people to identify any place on earth within metres, using a unique code.
Developed by Pieter Geelen and Harold Goddijn, the founders of satellite navigation systems TomTom, these 'Mapcodes' consist of four to seven characters, and are intended to be easy to remember, simple to communicate, and free.
For example, the code 8Q.T6 will direct you to the Supreme Court in Nairobi, and at reference 0HS.WZ you will find the entrance to Moi International airport in Mombasa.
The new technology will be particularly useful in East Africa, since countries in the region do not have a universal address system.
It could be aid emergency services, or aid workers in humanitarian crises.
Unlike postal codes, Mapcodes do not need databases that can be expensive to maintain. Instead, anyone can generate a Mapcode using free software by putting in the latitude and longitude of a location.
"The idea of Mapcode came about when we saw that millions of locations around the world do not have a recognisable address and were hard to find," said Pieter Geelen, co-founder of Mapcode.
"Introducing a Mapcode system means everyone is empowered with the ability to identify any location on earth, regardless of the country or its infrastructure."
"Mapcodes is an important development in creating a new global standard that makes it easy for anyone to pinpoint any location," said Harold Goddijn, CEO TomTom.
Mapcodes is not the first company to take on the postal code system. Last year, a mobile app called what3words was launched to make finding locations more accurate and memorable.
The app works by dividing the globe into 57 trillion 3m-by-3m squares, and labelling each area with just three words