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<p>The issue is as you say not an intrinsic problem with lat/lon but in the devices used to measure it. The 3x3m grid should however be sufficient for the purposes for which it is intended. It is not a designed as a competitor to lat/lon.</p>
<p>In the hypothetical tribal village in Africa, all it needs is a single visit from a surveyor with cm-grade GPS kit to tell everyone their coordinates. That's one end of the problem; the other end is that the users of these coordinates will also need accurate coordinates, but this time in real time (assuming they are searching for the right house, to deliver something for example).</p>
<p>By the way, for all the detractors of such a system, check out what the UAE introduced recently - a fairly affluent country with a poor addressing system. The difference is they use 10 digits which are algorithmically linked to grid coordinates, instead of three words.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.citymetric.com/horizons/buildings-dubai-and-abu-dhabi-didnt-have-official-addresses-thats-finally-changing-838">http://www.citymetric.com/horizons/buildings-dubai-and-abu-dhabi-didnt-have-official-addresses-thats-finally-changing-838</a></p>
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<p>On 2015-11-30 14:41, steggink@steggink.org wrote:</p>
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<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace"><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">Citeren Colin Smale <<a href="mailto:colin.smale@xs4all.nl">colin.smale@xs4all.nl</a>>:</span><br /><br />
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding: 0 0.4em; border-left: #1010ff 2px solid; margin: 0"><span style="white-space: nowrap;">Correct, but the accuracy issue is a weakness in lat/lon based</span><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">coordinates as well. If you use your consumer GPS or phone to find your</span><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">lat/lon, you might indeed be a long way adrift and you might get</span><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">different values on different occasions. Imagine that you were relying</span><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">on that to get your shopping delivered...</span><br /><br /></blockquote>
<br /> It isn't the same issue. There isn't a weakness in the lat/lon system itself (unless you're not using enough digits), but the weakness is in consumer GPS devices as you say. When using w3w in combination with GPS, you have to convert it to lat/lon first, so you have to deal with both the 3x3m inaccuracy AND the inaccuracy of consumer GPS devices.<br /><br /> Frank<br /><br /><br /> _______________________________________________<br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">talk mailing list</span><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;"><a href="mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org">talk@openstreetmap.org</a></span><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk">https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk</a></span></div>
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