Report On Three Word Address Project

Introduction to the system

The world is considerable gigantic, and as humans have populated it to the most extremities, addressing becomes an over the top problem. To add to that in this digital age people tend to get their clothing, electronics, services and even food and transportation and many more things/services online and mostly all of this require some or other form of addressing whether it be home or office address to deliver orders or some point of the road where the Ola/Uber will pick or drop the passenger.In a country like India, the addressing system is broken. There are many un-named streets, road, colonies and buildings. Often same building is referenced by multiple addresses. The condition is even worse in villages where there is no house numbering system. One can find a certain address only if she/he is local.

Due to these reasons, delivery executives or cab drivers have to keep asking for direction and even have to make a call the intended customers to confirm the address. This situation is only going to get worse as India is expected to generate $100 billion in online retail revenue by 2021. Which simply means more and more burden on the already non-existing addressing system.

The project Three Word Address is undertaken keeping the above mentioned problems. The main aim of the project is to solve the addressing problem. The solution provided is, to divide the whole globe into squares of size 3metre X 3metre, all of which will have a unique name. The unique would comprise of three different English words, thus the name “Three Word Address”.

Limitation of existing systems

There are currently a number of different addressing systems such as Open Coordinate Code, Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system, Mapcode, GeoHash etc.Open Coordinate Code represents any location in a single word, which is the combination of Alphabets, numbers and Plus (+). The word is same as length as a telephone number. This makes it difficult to remember and share the address. Adding to that length also varies as smaller the area larger the address. All this makes this system not a good idea if one wants to share an accurate location.

GeoHash uses a hash to encode to latitude and longitude into a single word. For example coordinate 57.64911, 10.40744 is encoded in u4pruydqqvj. This encoding has the same problem as Open Coordinate Code i.e. it is not easy to remember and share such complicated words. Also, the length of output is variable. The more accurate the location, lengthy the output produced. For example 12.12, 12.12 is encoded as s60sgy3 while more accurate location 12.12345, 12.12345 is encoded as s60sgzh00yg which is clearly lengthy. All this create different sets of the problem while sharing such address.Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinate System divides earth into sixty different zones each of them is band of six degree longitude. For example 43.642567, -79.387139 is encoded as 17T 630084 4833439 in UTM. This address produced is long and not in A format which can be shared and remembered.

Mapcode encoded a location in a code consisting of two groups of letters and digits, separated by a dot. For example 22.965269, 72.605606 is encoded in 6P.QGZ. This format has the problem as above, this is not a format which can shred by humans in day to conversations and also code length varies with location.Above mentioned systems have a set of most common problems such as address generated is in either numeric or alphanumeric which results it in a meaningless letters/numeric combination to humans. Adding to this due to various such as accuracy or location almost all have a varying length, this varying length further makes the address to seen as useless word in a foreign language.

Objective of the new system

The intention of building Three Word Address is to provide everyone with an address which is accurate, easy to read, easy to write and can be shared with anyone without much confusion. The prime objective is to design to an addressing system which will mitigate and remove all possible problems currently faced.

So this Project Three Words Address focuses on delivery services which need such system the most and thus the project intends to bridge the gap between delivery services and the right delivery spot (location). The system built is to be used by e-commerce companies as well as courier services or any industry which is concerned with delivering a product to the customers.

Real-time Scenario: When a customer orders a product she/he will be asked to provide his location of delivery. At that time he/she just has to turn on the location of their particular device and accurately select where the product is to be delivered. This selected location in terms of latitude and longitude will be feed into the system’s API and the generated address with other details would be replied back. This address will be used by delivery service to drop-ship the product to the customer.

The generated address: Generated address is nothing but three words which would point to a square. The location (i.e. latitude and longitude) provided to the API will be inside the square to which the address points. As the address consists of three words it can be called Three Word Address or TWA for short.Fig. 1(a)TWA will solve almost all problems which are faced in systems mentioned in 1.2. For example, some TWA can be Bean, Blue, Box or Red, Laptop, Car or White, Cute, Helmet. As seen TWA is very easy to read and one can easily share TWA with others. TWA would be of variable length but as words are very easy to remember than some alphanumeric combination or numbers this will not a problem. Also, as there would be same address for all coordinate location falling into the same square of size 3metre X 3metre. This means that TWA will be accurate enough to pinpoint any location and at same time wide enough that every time one provide a location of his/her front door address would be the same.Thus, the main objective to the system provides an API which would provide its user with an accurate Three Word Address for a given location and vice versa.

Problem definition

The projects aim to solve addressing problems faced by primarily delivery companies. This will be done by creating a Web API. The main input to API would be either a location in terms of latitude and longitude or the Three Word Address (TWA) of a square for which the location is required. The API would either reply with TWA when location is feed as input or would reply with location of the square when TWA of that square is feed as input.

The Problem Statement is “A system which can generate an addresses to every place (a 3metre X 3metre square) with high accuracy and the address have to simple enough to read, write and share. Also, an API which will enable programs to communicate with the system”.

Feasibility Study

According to United Nations Survey, Billions of people still live without proper address assignment. TWAs are precise yet easy to remember. TWA can be written down, spoken and can also be easily shared.TWA can be helpful for many industries such as delivery companies, online markets, organizations working for aid in rural or underdeveloped areas, geological surveys, forest management and many more industries which need a precise location addressing/naming system.A user who shops online can his/her product delivered on his desired door/gate in case the building has multiple gate. Also the end user have to select his/her desired location only once and he/she would be then provided with the TWA which can be easily remembered due to simple design, further more he/she can use the same TWA on any platform that uses the API. He/she can even share the address as his/her normal address as it is unique.

Similarly, A company who plans to work on some remote area for example a survey of land to find oil. In such a situation as the land is remote it won’t have any proper naming or address, here this system can used as it would provide not only unique but also precise names to each and every corner of that remote land.Hardware requirements of this system are very simple just an internet connection enabled device with a modern screen and in case where one want to user their live location a GPS enabled device.

System Requirements

Functional Requirements

• Registration: Client registers with required details accessing system and its function in accordance of being a guest or a corporate user.
• Login: Registered clients get login and access control to the privileged functionality after checking of assigned tokens.
• Profile update: Data to be saved for modifications made by the client.
• Mapping: Mapping of the earth is carried out in 3metre X 3metre square to distinctly identify and provide unique address name/TWA.
• Coordinate Normalization: To find the square in which the given coordinate lies.
• Update AMT: Save TWA generated by system.Non-Functional Requiems
• Availability: System is reliable as it is available on all mostly major platforms.
• Performance: The service provides a real time mapping of coordinates towards an unsophisticated output.
• Database access: It is required to access the word library and administration rights.
• Tools and Technology Used
• GitHub: GitHub is used for source code management, GitHub uses GIT. As GitHub is a cloud based service it makes it simple to shared and work together on the project.

Sublime, Atom, Visual Code

• Node.js: Node.js is JavaScript runtime environment. The REST API will be created using node.
• JSON: JSON is selected as data format for the data exchange when the APIs invoked.
• Maria DB: Maria DB is Relational Database. Maria DB is fork of MySQL. It works same as MySQL but with some added features.
• Apache: Apache server is used to host Website.

Programming Languages:

• Java: Java is used for the Android app
• Python: Algorithm which will find the square in which the coordinate lies, Algorithm which will manage assignment of TWA to squares and some other are created using Python.
• JavaScript: JavaScript is used in Node.js to created API.
• PHP: PHP is used to make backend of the Website.
• HTML, JavaScript, CSS: Front end of the Website is created all of these.

Project Estimation

• The project is required to be finished within 6 or 8 months.
• Cost of project is still to be estimated.
• The cost of making website and establish the server with different outlets will be calculated.
• The cost of system will depend on complexity as for its entire area mapping and labelling.

System Design

An entity-relationship diagram is developed to clarify understanding of operations and process. It also signifies attributes of few specific entities. It shows how user requests data in order to carry out its tasks.

The main entities in above diagrams are Corporate, Guest User, Server, Delivery Agency and Customer. Corporates are the one for whom this system is built. Attributes relating to corporates is shown in figure. When customer orders product he provides his location and then the corporate makes use of out Three word Address service to get the precise location where the product is to be delivered. This address is then transferred to delivery service with other details. Finally the customer gets his promised product.From the Website any individuals (guest users) can get TWA of any location of their interest.

The Data flow diagram of the project is created with two levels i.e. Level 0 and Level 1. Level 0 represents high level view of the data operations performed during real time use of resources. The diagram depicts how user requests location and server responds to request. Level 1, however, describes the flow of data distinctively. Special components in the diagram are Guest User, Registered user, Location processing request, Server and Account Management.[

Future Enhancement

• TWAs in Multiple Languages. Hindi and Gujarati will be added first of all.
• A better and more robust API monitoring and handling mechanism.
• Graphical representation of API invocation.
• Address name prediction as the user types it in.
• Custom TWAs. These TWAs will work with TWAs generated by system.

Conclusion

The delivery service industry is depends heavily on addressing system, and addressing systems in India are either not available or are in severe condition and often fail. Which make it a very time and other resource consuming for both the company and customer to deliver the parcel/product to its intended destination.

TWA aims to tackle this problem by providing an addressing system which will work everywhere regardless of the location. This system will be accurate enough to pin point the gate/door on which the customer wants their product to be delivered and simple enough that he/she can remember the address and use it where this system is used.