A friend of mine had been preaching the virtues of "What3Words" for a few years, and it's finally being accepted into the mainstream for police, fire, and other rescue services.
The app has an interesting origin. Apparently started by a musician who struggled with finding the right address for gigs, he started working with some friends on finding a better way.
I'd like to make a quick aside to say that I think it's amazing how many people can't figure out how to navigate the world without a GPS telling them where to go. Admittedly, I'm old, but part of my job in another life was to drive all over the country to put on BMX stunt shows. We used to call places to get directions, typically from a larger road or highway. But either way, coast to coast, small towns and big cities, we had to find our way. Sometimes we had maps, sometimes not. I'd go to AAA and get region and state maps, but many times they didn't have the level of detail needed. And you know what, we got to where we were going to. I'd also use an AAA guide book to find hotels. This was all before cell phones and the internet. Anyway, I digress...
There's a cool TED talk that discusses the What3Words app and how it works. The photos in the presentation (about :40 seconds in) are pretty wild.
Anyway, the bottom line is that the entire world is broken down into 3 meter/10ft squares and every square in the world has a unique set of random three words assigned to it.
How is that helpful? For a number of reasons. First, not every spot--even in urban/suburban areas has an accurate address associated with it, or the property is so large that a single address isn't helpful.
Let's say that you were trail running at Moraine Farm in Beverly. You get hurt and you need help.
You could say that you're at Moraine Farm and that narrows your location down to this:
The "address" for Moraine Farm is 779 Cabot St, Beverly, MA 01915, which gets you to here:
And while the initial response might be headed to 779 Cabot St, your actual location could be here:
Still at Moraine Farm, still at the same address, but obviously pretty far from the designated entrance. You *could* use latitude and longitude, but what are the chance of missing a number or making a mistake while trying to give someone this string of numbers: 42.
But, what if, instead of saying that you were at Moraine Farm, you just told the 911 operator that you were at "brain.sulk.cigar"
With that, you immediately have a much more specific location and multiple other, closer, access points can be identified.
This is becoming the default way that many emergency responders are using to find people when a regular address isn't going to work.
And more than just locations in the woods or rescues, you could use the W3W to find an exact location if you're meeting someone in a large parking or you need to remember where you parked. There are many and more applications for this.
The HAS been some skepticism from some rescue organizations, but from everyone I've spoken to, this is much better than what has been used in the past. In fact, some 911 operators can get your location from your call and they have the option of sharing your location with first responders with either lat/long or W3W.
The app is free, and easy to use.
You can even try to put some words together to see where that would be, for example, "shot.pickle.toaster" is near a WalMart Supercenter north of Phoenix, AZ...
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