National Postcodes to be introduced

Del2005

Del2005 wrote: »

Are they not naming all the roads for post codes? I've seen loads of local roads with new Lxxxx signs on them.

No that is just a road grading system.

• M is for motorway as in M8, M9
• N is for National road. (N1-50 is Primary national road, N51 onwards is national secondary road)
• R is regional road (e.g R690)
• L is a local road eg L1234

bastiste wrote:

yep this has been on the agenda for ages,will clear the confusion up somewhat...and with all the uk immigrants in the door for welfare we might as well call ourselves british

Being a bit dramatic now. Most countries have post/zip code system. might prevent a confidential letter going to another John Doe of the same address for starters

ForiegnNational

garydubh wrote: »

Conolan - Loc8 code has taken all system and user requirements into account over a period of 5 years and to say it is just an engineering approach only ignores the fact that it was field tested and refined amongst users for 2 years and has designed-in elements which are user/human orientated. I think you have not taken the time to understand fully what is going on in Loc8 Codes.

And anyhow what is "simple" or "people friendly" about "MFARZY"

I like what Loc8 have done, which is to uniquely identify each house, garage and garden shed in the state with it's own postcode, and if we are looking at a future proof design, then I think it will win.

However, when you look at the big wide world, only a very few countries have adopted an 8 digit code. The majority use less characters, with six seeming to be the optimal (if Canada can get away with six, then I think Ireland might just).

Loc8 is exactly what I want the likes of UPS, DHL, etc to use to find me out in the sticks, however, if you are looking for overall adoption from the general public, then a six digit code is the norm.

Whose requirements were to provide a perfect location address? For courier companies, yes, for the general public, maybe not...

conolan

ForiegnNational wrote: »

I like what Loc8 have done, which is to uniquely identify each house, garage and garden shed in the state with it's own postcode, and if we are looking at a future proof design, then I think it will win.

Gocode and iCode6 can do the same thing. Its probably slightly more detail than we need. Going to a lesser detail (5x.xxxN -x.xxx - 3 decimal places) will result in non-unique codes.

For example, a terrace of 4 houses near me running east to west has the following easterly coordinates for each house.
-6.9964 -6.9962 -6.9961 -6.9959
Therefore enough with some to spare to identify each house.
However a code based on 3 decimal places will only identify the terrace and part of the next terrace as one code.

ForiegnNational

conolan wrote: »

Gocode and iCode6 can do the same thing. Its probably slightly more detail than we need. Going to a lesser detail (5x.xxxN -x.xxx - 3 decimal places) will result in non-unique codes.

For example, a terrace of 4 houses near me running east to west has the following easterly coordinates for each house.
-6.9964 -6.9962 -6.9961 -6.9959
Therefore enough with some to spare to identify each house.
However a code based on 3 decimal places will only identify the terrace and part of the next terrace as one code.

I agree, 8 characters is more detail than we generally need. When you look at countries WITH six digit postcodes, they generally have multi-line addresses.

If you address a letter to Canada/UK/etc, you give:

<First Name> <Surname>
<House Name> / <House Number>
<Street> / <Townland> / <Borough>
<Postal Town>
<XXX XXX> / <YYYYY>
<Country>

Loc8 would allow this to be replaced by:

<First Name> <Surname>
<XX-XX-XX-XX>
<Country>

Personally, I don't think the latter works.

The former address where the six (five, four or even three) characters identifies a general location, when combined with the rest of the address is sufficient for nearly every other country.

Loc8 is over-engineered for the general public. It serves a specific purpose for delivery and emergency services as is. A shortened form, such as your iCode6 or GoCode is sufficient for everybody else.

Blisterman

Well in The UK, technically all you need is

No 6
SE1 2TY
UK

But people put the rest of the address anyway.

recedite

ForiegnNational wrote: »

Whose requirements were to provide a perfect location address? For courier companies, yes, for the general public, maybe not...

Eh.. who orders the stuff that couriers are delivering, and who complains when it fails to arrive, or arrives late?

conolan wrote: »

I have a strong desire to see something that's easier for people to use than either of the current solutions. I don't have all the solutions. You and the gocode people know so much more than me about this stuff. But I think you both have taken an engineering or mathematical approach without considering whether people would accept it.

I love the accuracy inherent in lat/long but am driven by KeepItSimpleStupid.

Do you work in the Department of Finance by any chance? :pac:

ForiegnNational

recedite wrote: »

Do you work in the Department of Finance by any chance? :pac:

No, he didn't say;
Misquote
Obfuscate
Confuse
Deny
State the obvious
Spin

He can't work for the DoF (more like DuFF).

Jayuu

The first question I have is what is the code being introduced for? Is it being introduced mainly for use in SatNav systems or for more general public use as in postal/package deliveries?

I've looked up the GoCode and Loc8 sites to work out my address.

The GoCode is more intuitive because it begins with 17 (my current Dublin area address) so there's less to remember not only for me but also for anyone potentially contacting me. Obviously however that doesn't always work because most of the country is based on a more random pattern for the first two letters. I did wonder why some use of the 2 letter county code that is used on car registrations hadn't been considered by its creator given that the first two letters are being reserved for area location. At least that would remove competition from towns and cities for the code to start with the first letter in their name and would create an even more recognisable system.

The Loc8 code is more accurate because it works down to an actual house number but its harder to remember because there's nothing explicitly geographical or catchy about it so it seems to be more suited to a SatNav type system.

I think both systems have their advantages but they seem to be aimed at slightly different markets. So depending on what the primary market is for the post code system then you'd potentially go for a different system.

conolan

Jayuu wrote: »

I've looked up the GoCode and Loc8 sites to work out my address.

The GoCode is more intuitive because it begins with 17 ...

I think you mean the iCode6 (gocode is another offering but lacks recognisable prefixes)

The 2 letter car code could be used, but then a code would be 8 characters long. I've done some work on that also, but it's not as refined as iCode6.

garydubh

Blisterman wrote: »

Well in The UK, technically all you need is

No 6
SE1 2TY
UK

But people put the rest of the address anyway.

Absolutely Untrue!!!

A UK postcode on average is 7 characters and then also the property number is needed to identify the exact address - so 9 or even 10 characters are required - don't worry a common mistake!!!

garydubh

ForiegnNational wrote: »

I agree, 8 characters is more detail than we generally need. When you look at countries WITH six digit postcodes, they generally have multi-line addresses.

If you address a letter to Canada/UK/etc, you give:

<First Name> <Surname>
<House Name> / <House Number>
<Street> / <Townland> / <Borough>
<Postal Town>
<XXX XXX> / <YYYYY>
<Country>

Loc8 would allow this to be replaced by:

<First Name> <Surname>
<XX-XX-XX-XX>
<Country>

Personally, I don't think the latter works. .

If required a Loc8 Code can be reduced to 6 Characters (a locality) by dropping the bit between the dashes in the middle.

Beacuse 40% of all Irish addresses are non unique and most do not have numbers giving the general public a code which brings then to an area is not enough - once there there is nothing to psoitively identify the desired address. In addition a genarl area can put you on a motorway when your destination is off to one side but several kilometers to travel to get off.

A Loc8 Code has the benefit that is does all required - if you do not need the resolution you can just use the first 3 characters (Zone) or First and last 3 (a locality) - its up to the user. If people in the UK can remeber up to 10 characters ( a 7 character postcode plus up to 3 property numbers) surely us Irish can manage just 8!!!

garydubh

garydubh wrote: »

Absolutely Untrue!!!

A UK postcode on average is 7 characters and then also the property number is needed to identify the exact address - so 9 or even 10 characters are required - don't worry a common mistake!!!

Sorry misread - you are right - postcode (mostly 7) plus up 2/3 property number to identify a house. However in rural UK including Norther Ireland property numbers have not always been allocated.

Also big difference between UK and a Loc8 Code - to use on a mobile device a UK postcode must have access to an address database to look up code, find related address, find the right number and then get the Coordinates for it.... A Loc8 Code needs none of that - just a preloaded calculation to convert it back to coordinates - makes access and deployment much easier/cheaper and a Loc8 Code never has to change with property densification as happens routinely in UK, USA and Canada and causes much debate and legal upset.

Del2005

Jayuu wrote: »

The first question I have is what is the code being introduced for? Is it being introduced mainly for use in SatNav systems or for more general public use as in postal/package deliveries?

Are they not the same thing?

I've a friend who's a bike courier and the amount of people who don't know the directions to their own house is crazy.

Since we are introducing post codes in 201x we should at least make it so that the system brings you to the house and not somewhere near, which we can already do without them.

Empire o de Sun

I've got it

post code = land line phone number

nearly every house/building has (or did have) one.

01-1234567

garydubh

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

I've got it

post code = land line phone number

nearly every house/building has (or did have) one.

01-1234567

That has a ring to it!!!

but what happens when same number is brought from one premises to another?

conolan

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

post code = land line phone number

nearly every house/building has (or did have) one.

The satnav people would have a problem with that. Needs a database to convert the number to a lat/long.

In a similar vein, ESB has a unique number for all buildings, though not as recognisable to people as 01 / 021 / 051 etc.

jetpack101

I still can't find out where or how to assign an icode6

Has anyone done a study to see who has a loc8 number and who has a icode6(gocode)

It would be interesting to see the results of this as it would be like a vote for a given system. I mean if 150,000 have a loc8 and 40,000 have icode6 then I would assume loc8 is the way to go.


PS
Anyone know if Log8 is available for Android yet ??????

conolan

You're mixing up iCode6 and gocode. Icode6 is a proposal, not in use.
Gocode appears to be in use to some extent. Loc8 also. However, when we have a national postcode, all other codes will go the way of netscape.

dmeehan

While all of the proposals mentioned here are worthy I think that the only postcode "system" that will win will be one that overlays on the postal areas/towns that are already in use as this will be easier for the general public to adopt.

I think it will be something like a UK style post code with a code for a major town in the area and that split into districts and then a further section for a route or closer location info.

For example if you have a town or county code that is easily recognisable it would be more likely to be adopted by the general public

While I do agree that the GPS based systems give exact locations of a particular address, sometimes the code generated has no mnemonic related to the area it represents.

The loc8 code for an area of Killarney is T6Z, or gocode is V23. These representations do not have any relation to Killarney. (I dont mean to single out a particular system for critiscism, I was just using them as an example. sorry)

Also these GPS based calculations do not adhere to physical boundaries or geography that would otherwise be an ideal way to create an area/district, and it is quite possible that two adjacent properties may be in completely different "zones"

Again I do not wish to criticise any of the above mentioned ideas as they are all very well done and Im sure a lot of work was put into each of them. Would there be an "easy" way to combine GPS co-ords with a pre defined town/district/area etc???

steve-o

garydubh wrote: »

That has a ring to it!!!

but what happens when same number is brought from one premises to another?

... or the premises has no landline... or the occupant wants to be ex-directory.

RockyTwoArms

Is the delay in implementing post codes simply down to waiting for the government to issue the contract?? Should an post and OSI not just provide the post codes for free as they already have started their shared directory;

Geo Directory
The GeoDirectory is a national address database which has been created and is maintained jointly by the OSi and An Post. OSi is responsible for the geographic element of each address. The database now contains more than 2 million buildings and 44,000 thoroughfare addresses with, in 2008, in excess of 80,000 new entries being made to the directory, including of some 3,500 postal routes which are the prime source of information to the delivery of mail.
Throughout 2008 the Geo Directory database was maintained by ensuring that the OSI and An Pos t databases were synchronised

- 2008 OSI annual report

Also the average salary in the OSI is 56K, over half of which is funded by the tax payer yet all its services are charged for, even charges for local government. Now they are going to get a multi-million contract (for loc8) for work that should be just their job?
Most other government funded organisation (DOEHG, EPA, marine institute) provide GIS for free.

spacetweek

Guys, based on the details of what the Gov's postcode system is going to look like come autumn 2011, I fleshed it out a bit. See the attached excel.
The structure will be 6-char alphanumeric. The combos are:
A99 999
AA9 999
AAA 999

Generally, the first two (A and AA) will be used for counties and large cities, AAA for towns. Just like the Gov's press release said.

Here's a summary of what I devised based on this. The five largest cities are D, C, L, G, and W. For the urban area, Dublin will be divided into 30 postal zones, the other four cities into 10 each. Dublin therefore gets 3000 codes, the other four get 1000.

Then I assigned 3-letter abbrevs to all towns nationwide with a pop>5000 inh. Some examples: Drogheda DHD, NBR Newbridge, LEI Leixlip. Each gets 1000 codes.

Finally, for people living outside towns, the one or two-letter codes used on reg plates will be utilised (e.g. D Dublin rural, C Cork rural, MO Mayo, OY Offaly). Counties with two letters get 10000 codes, one letter 10000 less what was assigned to the urban area, eg. Dublin rural gets 10000-3000 = 7000; Limerick rural 10000-1000 = 9000.

Some summary stats:
Rural areas: 9.2 inh/code average.
Dublin rural: 20.2
Cork rural: 32.3
Towns with 3-letter codes: 12.2 (range: 5.0 - 35).
Dublin city: 34.9
Cork city: 19.0
Limerick city: 9.1
Galway city: 7.3
Waterford city: 4.9

Example output codes:
D04 123 Dublin 4 address
D28 789 Somewhere in south Dublin
D51 661 Rural county Dublin
C01 047 Cork city address
C79 094 Somewhere in rural Cork
NAV 447 Navan
COB 551 Cobh
RUS 044 Rush
WX1 192 Rural county Wexford
CN4 629 Rural county Cavan
KE7 713 Rural Kildare

Better off posting it as a .csv as not all of us have the latest version of excell.

conolan

I like this. I know the GPS crowd will tell you that it needs a database lookup to extract a lat/long, but it's much more human. And it won't have a unique code per building.

Any idea of the number of buildings per unique code, for example a city versus a rural location?

antoinolachtnai

As I understand it, the concept is town based, ie there will be no county code. The reason for this is to mirror the way post is delivered.

sovereign

conolan wrote: »

I like this. I know the GPS crowd will tell you that it needs a database lookup to extract a lat/long, but it's much more human. And it won't have a unique code per building.

I think it would be crazy not to use this opportunity to use a GPS based postcode. If they go with the 'town name' system above you will just end up with multiple postcode systems in use. Loc8 and other GPS based codes will continue to be used by the delivery guys for accurate building identification - especially since they are already supported on GPS devices like Garmin.

The market is already showing that it is a GPS based code that is required - why fight it?

conolan

sovereign wrote: »

especially since they are already supported on GPS devices like Garmin.

The garmin bit with an existing proposed code isn't important. It's just an algorithm, a formula like in excel spreadsheet. Easily replaced.

An algorithm-based solution would be ideal, BUT if the public don't like it, they don't use it. If they don't use it (ie. tell delivery companies and service providers) then it fails.

sovereign

conolan wrote: »

The garmin bit with an existing proposed code isn't important. It's just an algorithm, a formula like in excel spreadsheet. Easily replaced.

An algorithm-based solution would be ideal, BUT if the public don't like it, they don't use it. If they don't use it (ie. tell delivery companies and service providers) then it fails.

If its a GPS based code then I agree the algorithm isn't important.
But its a leap to think that Garmin would be happy to incorporate a database of Irish postcodes for cross reference which would need to be updated constantly, possibly have an annual licensing cost and end up getting calls from endusers because it's not accurate?

With regard to the public liking the code - if the code is mandatory for postal delivery (including grant payments and other benefits like medical cards etc) the public would get use it ok. I imagine it would be the delivery guys who would telling the public about the code.

We have a few relations with same name in four houses (was originally same family farm) and so would have the same postcode in the system proposed above. We have a good postman but as soon as there is a temporary replacement our letters get delivered all over the place. How would the system above solve the problem without a unique building code?

Also - are you sure the public wouldn't like

CT KA TC 99

but they would like

C79 094

?

spacetweek

sovereign wrote: »

If its a GPS based code then I agree the algorithm isn't important.
But its a leap to think that Garmin would be happy to incorporate a database of Irish postcodes for cross reference which would need to be updated constantly, possibly have an annual licensing cost and end up getting calls from endusers because it's not accurate?

With regard to the public liking the code - if the code is mandatory for postal delivery (including grant payments and other benefits like medical cards etc) the public would get use it ok. I imagine it would be the delivery guys who would telling the public about the code.

We have a few relations with same name in four houses (was originally same family farm) and so would have the same postcode in the system proposed above. We have a good postman but as soon as there is a temporary replacement our letters get delivered all over the place. How would the system above solve the problem without a unique building code?

Also - are you sure the public wouldn't like

CT KA TC 99

but they would like

C79 094

The gov's proposed system wouldn't ever need to be updated.
Your postman's problem would be solved with a comprehensive road naming and numbering scheme, but that's for the council, not postcodes.
The code you mention has 8 chars versus 6, so it is significant in terms of trying to memorise.

Dolanbaker - good point, have reattached.

recedite

spacetweek wrote: »

Example output codes:
D04 123 Dublin 4 address
D28 789 Somewhere in south Dublin
D51 661 Rural county Dublin
C01 047 Cork city address
C79 094 Somewhere in rural Cork
NAV 447 Navan
COB 551 Cobh
RUS 044 Rush
WX1 192 Rural county Wexford
CN4 629 Rural county Cavan
KE7 713 Rural Kildare

Sorry, no use at all to me.
I'd still have the courier ringing me at 6.30 am asking for directions whenever I make an internet purchase.
I'd still be trying to get GPS coordinates for the B&B or rental house when I'm travelling.