National Postcodes to be introduced

formerly scottish paddy

SpaceTime wrote: »

I've tried using a house number too and discovered that doesn't work as there are no official numbers and various people claim to be number 1, 2., 10 and 15 for example and no numbers are displayed.

Try putting up the last (unique) part of your eircode.

oscarBravo

Sam Russell wrote: »

No, why do we invent a postcode system based on random numbers, or worse, random letters and numbers?

Are you asking because you don't know? Not agreeing with the reasons is a very different thing from pretending that there are no reasons.

It is at least a fixed length code unlike the one the UK has.

And unlike DNS.

I never mentioned anything about distributed, redundant hierarchy of servers to service address resolution requests - just a decent design without this requirement.

Yeah, you'd never see a DNS name consisting of apparently random letters and numbers, like d2o307dm5mqftz.cloudfront.net.

BailMeOut

FishOnABike wrote: »

At least two approaches could be used for computerized routing.

1. For a static solution. Each individual operator can define their own GPS / location based delivery areas as a series of coordinate defined polygons. All geo-code based postal codes calculated to be within the bounds of a particular polygon would be in that delivery area. The operator would define their delivery areas taking geographical features such as mountains, rivers, lakes, peninsulas etc into account.

2. For a dynamic solution. The geo-code based postal codes for a day's deliveries could be overlaid on a digital roadmap. This would then be the classic computer science traveling salesman problem. A near optimal route could then be calculated for the day's deliveries.

A combination of 1. and 2. could be used to first coarse sort items for delivery into delivery areas and then optimise delivery routes within each delivery area.

With a geo-code based postal code this could all be done without reference to the eircode database.

I read this and first thoughts are that Eircode is a much a better way to deal with all this.

recedite

FishOnABike wrote: »

A geo-code based postal code can identify a delivery point to within 3 to 4 metres. I think that is specific enough to identify any specific home or business in Ireland.

Also, I would point out that you refer to a sat-nav device using GPS only.
GPS satellite system is owned and operated by the USA, but so-called "GPS devices" can also be set to pick up the equivalent Russian satellites (Glonass) which increases accuracy here in Ireland, because the Russian satellites are more concentrated in the northern latitudes.
And when the EU's own Galileo satellite system is up and running, sat-navs will be accurate to 1 metre, or less if they are picking up all three sets of satellites.

Sam Russell

.... and less than a cm if a ground based station is included.

Carawaystick

FishOnABike wrote: »

A geo-code based postal code can identify a delivery point to within 3 to 4 metres. I think that is specific enough to identify any specific home or business in Ireland.

No it's not. What do you do in the case of a rural semi-d cottage with the front doors beside each other?

larchill

Knock on the door

recedite

Eircode finder does not attempt to differentiate between two adjacent front doors, or two apartment doors one above the other. It only attempts to locate the centre of the building.

oscarBravo

recedite wrote: »

Eircode finder does not attempt to differentiate between two adjacent front doors, or two apartment doors one above the other. It only attempts to locate the centre of the building.

F28 FV09

F28 CD34

https://goo.gl/maps/gKNIn

MBSnr

recedite wrote: »

Eircode finder does not attempt to differentiate between two adjacent front doors, or two apartment doors one above the other. It only attempts to locate the centre of the building.

EDIT - Actually I think I picked up your point wrongly here...

MONTEREY COURT,
QUINCENTENNIAL DRIVE,
SALTHILL,
GALWAY
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

APARTMENT 1
MONTEREY COURT
QUINCENTENNIAL DRIVE
SALTHILL
GALWAY
H91 HP48
.
.
.
APARTMENT 20
MONTEREY COURT
QUINCENTENNIAL DRIVE
SALTHILL
GALWAY
H91 PA47

ukoda

larchill wrote: »

Knock on the door

But a geo code will open your car door and walk you to the front door of your desired house and gently knock on it for you.
Can ericode do that? No? It's useless.

Tenshot

Just noticed the official Eircode code of Practice (V1.1) in Google search results; I can't find an official link to it on the main Eircode site though.

I hadn't seen this before; a couple of interesting things in middle of the document relating to how fresh Eircodes are rolled out for newly developed buildings, and older ones retired.

(I wonder how long old postcodes will continue to work after they are officially retired, given that they could presumably persist on printed materials for quite some time after.)

antoinolachtnai

SpaceTime wrote: »

Found my eircode notification - delivered to a house 5 doors away ... Typical

There's a house name clearly displayed on both gates and on both eircode notification envelopes...

We also have a regular one : packages left in the recycling bin... Which was put out and collected !!!!!

Accuracy of delivery is a problem, as predicted. A lot of mail (by which I mean around 1 percent) is misdelivered and this is a bigger problem for non-unique addresses.

There is no guarantee you will get the right eircode and there is no way that eircode can be sure of the quality.

This is not much of an issue for the people who peruse this forum but if you are an older person, living on your own, it could be a serious issue if you are depending on the eircode to get you your ambulance. If it is confounded with a bit of address weirdness (like a post town that is further away than the nearest town) then there is plenty room for confusion. This could have all been avoided with a better design.

clewbays

SpaceTime wrote: »

Found my eircode notification - delivered to a house 5 doors away ... Typical

That's only the 2nd mistake reported here. The first one was where it was delivered to the company even though they had moved address. Did the house down the road also get their own notification? From what you said, it looks like the problem is with your postman.

Looks like a hugely successful delivery of Eircodes given that all addresses should have been done by Friday. The nay sayers and the drama queens must be horrified!

We got ours through the post yesterday, one of the neighbours made several phone calls as their address was written in an unfamiliar format and the householder's name was incorrect.
Not really an eircode issue but he called them anyway, "just stick the eircode on the end of your usual address" he was informed.

He's still pissed off though...

clewbays

plodder wrote: »

I'll just point out once again, that you can use a database with a geocode, if you want unique codes per building which gives you all the benefits below. I've always been sceptical that unique codes for units within a building were worth having. It's all the more true, I think now it's clear that Eircodes on their own can't possibly be used to locate such properties.

and I'll just point out again that many users want a unique code per address and geocode will not deliver that especially given that any error in the geocode would require a correction whereas an error in the X/Y will not require an amendment to the Eircode because they are two separate data items.

gerard2210

Deleted User wrote:

We got ours through the post yesterday, one of the neighbours made several phone calls as their address was written in an unfamiliar format and the householder's name was incorrect. Not really an eircode issue but he called them anyway, "just stick the eircode on the end of your usual address" he was informed.

Some names are incorrect on the letters because the geo directory was last updated in some areas over a year ago.
Postmen were told to deliver the letter even if name is wrong as the code is for the property not the named person.

plodder

clewbays wrote: »

and I'll just point out again that many users want a unique code per address and geocode will not deliver that especially given that any error in the geocode would require a correction whereas an error in the X/Y will not require an amendment to the Eircode because they are two separate data items.

I presume those users are the various state agencies who want us to pay our taxes and water charges etc - which is all fair enough. I've no problem with that. I don't think unique code per address is of any particular benefit to the public though. In any case, I'm not here to make the case for loc8 et al. I would have been happy with Eircode if it was hierarchical, because meaningful small areas are much more useful than the kind of arbitrary square hierarchy that geocodes provide.

recedite

oscarBravo wrote: »

F28 FV09

F28 CD34
https://goo.gl/maps/gKNIn

Two semi detached houses. The eircode is placed approx. in the centre of the roof of each house.
The criticism of a location code was that it could not differentiate between two front doors beside each other.

For that pair of houses, the doors are at least 10 metres apart, so a GPS location code could have been registered to a govt. database for the exact position of each door. Or just the roof if you wanted the lesser accuracy of eircode. That would then be the unique identifier for all official dealings such as property tax.
Then the owner could also have created an unofficial code for the back door if he wanted to. And one for his boat mooring. And one for his cattle shed. And being hierarchical, he would have had the choice of giving out only the part of the code that gives his location to within 2Km or whatever, depending on who he was dealing with.

clewbays

plodder wrote: »

I presume those users are the various state agencies who want us to pay our taxes and water charges etc - which is all fair enough. I've no problem with that. I don't think unique code per address is of any particular benefit to the public though. In any case, I'm not here to make the case for loc8 et al. I would have been happy with Eircode if it was hierarchical, because meaningful small areas are much more useful than the kind of arbitrary square hierarchy that geocodes provide.

There are many organisations that will use Eircodes as address validation and address ID management including health nurses making home visits, electoral register maintenance, etc. I think the unique aspect can be beneficial to the public as well: I generally use the same taxi company and they use my phone number to tell me my address!

Small areas are great for describing census data but have many other uses been made of them? Some rural small areas are large - I used the link you provided before to attach an example of a small area where the ambulance would struggle to find an address with only a householder name and small area code to go on. I chose a well-known area so people may know it well.

clewbays

attachment

antoinolachtnai

So assign a unique code to each dwelling within the small area? Or better still, assign a unique code to each road segment, and a further code to each dwelling on that road segment?

FishOnABike

Originally Posted by FishOnABike
A geo-code based postal code can identify a delivery point to within 3 to 4 metres. I think that is specific enough to identify any specific home or business in Ireland.

Carawaystick wrote: »

No it's not. What do you do in the case of a rural semi-d cottage with the front doors beside each other?

The postal code coordinate (whether a geo-code or the coordinates stored in the eircode ECAF or ECAD) refers to the centroid of the delivery point, not the front door.

An average room is more than 3 or 4 metres wide. The centres of two (even small) semi-detached rural bungalows are far enough apart to have separate postal codes.

In either case (eircode or geo-code based postal code) the final navigation step is visual. Once you are near enough to see the houses you are near enough to see if the house name or number matches the address on the post.

An eircode would need a paid for database lookup to get the delivery location coordinates. A geo-code based postal code would not, the delivery location coordinates could be determined on the fly, for free.

plodder

clewbays wrote: »

There are many organisations that will use Eircodes as address validation and address ID management including health nurses making home visits, electoral register maintenance, etc. I think the unique aspect can be beneficial to the public as well: I generally use the same taxi company and they use my phone number to tell me my address!

Small areas are great for describing census data but have many other uses been made of them? Some rural small areas are large - I used the link you provided before to attach an example of a small area where the ambulance would struggle to find an address with only a householder name and small area code to go on. I chose a well-known area so people may know it well.

Look, the only difference I was suggesting to Eircode is that it would be hierarchical instead of random. That means it is exactly the same in every other way and :-
a) would have a unique code per address, including units in same building
b) small areas would not be used for navigation. The individual Eircodes would.

You're right that small areas are great for census data, but they are also useful for a multitude of other purposes:
- grouping deliveries based on area.
- calculating insurance risk
- any purpose that involves identifying people by where they live, but anonymously (without identifying them)

If small areas don't work for your purpose, then you just ignore them, and what you are left with is Eircode, exactly as it is today.

[edit]on your example above, Laragh in the Wicklow mountains is a "big" small area yes. That's a consequence of not many people living in the mountains.

clewbays

The smarter you make the unique address identifier the greater the risk that it will be changed as a result of future building developments e.g. new housing, new roads, etc. Embedding the coordinates or small areas into it has that risk. The ECAD file contains both the coordinates and the small areas and either or both of them can be changed without affecting the Eircode. Its beauty is its cumbersomeness, a terrible beauty is born!

antoinolachtnai

You can just have numbering rules to deal with those situations. You leave space in the numbering. If there is going to be major redevelopment in an area which is going to exhaust the numbers then you overlay new area numbers on top of the old area number.

plodder

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

You can just have numbering rules to deal with those situations. You leave space in the numbering. If there is going to be major redevelopment in an area which is going to exhaust the numbers then you overlay new area numbers on top of the old area number.

While the concern is valid to a point, it is way over stated. In most cases new small areas will be created out of larger existing ones and literally nobody would have to change. New housing estates are nearly always built on greenfield sites. Even infill situations wouldn't necessarily be a problem if the codes were random within the small area.

oscarBravo

recedite wrote: »

Two semi detached houses. The eircode is placed approx. in the centre of the roof of each house.
The criticism of a location code was that it could not differentiate between two front doors beside each other.

Given that the whole point of a postal code is to locate a premises, I'm not sure where the obsession with distinguishing adjacent doors came from. Of course a location code can distinguish neighbouring properties. That's not the point, or at least it's not the point in isolation.

It's far too easy to criticise isolated aspects of a design, and point out that, for those isolated aspects, there are other solutions that may have addressed them more successfully. If you can posit a solution that would have addressed every concern of every interested party better than Eircode did, then we might be on to something.

Would a location-based code be better for some things? Sure. Would it have been acceptable for this application? No, because its hierarchy is based on geographical squares, which makes it useless to An Post, and if An Post wasn't prepared to work with it, it was never going to happen.

Would a small area-based hierarchy be better for some things? Sure. Would it have been acceptable for this application? Probably not: small area boundaries change from census to census, which means that postcodes will change, which is a Really Bad Thing.

And so on, and so on. Eircode may not be perfect, but arguing against it on that basis is only rational if there is a perfect alternative, or at least one that is a better compromise between the conflicting requirements.

Then the owner could also have created an unofficial code for the back door if he wanted to. And one for his boat mooring. And one for his cattle shed. And being hierarchical, he would have had the choice of giving out only the part of the code that gives his location to within 2Km or whatever, depending on who he was dealing with.

The owner can still do that. There's no sudden law against giving someone a Loc8 code, or an OpenPostCode, or a GoCode, or a What3Words code...

plodder

oscarBravo wrote: »

Would a small area-based hierarchy be better for some things? Sure. Would it have been acceptable for this application? Probably not: small area boundaries change from census to census, which means that postcodes will change, which is a Really Bad Thing.

See post. #7380

oscarBravo

plodder wrote: »

See post. #7380

The one where you said both "in most cases" and "literally nobody would have to change"?