National Postcodes to be introduced

Carawaystick

SpaceTime wrote: »

Because there's an individual house name on each envelope, and because of the sheer volume of mail (it's an urban route) the postman gets confused.


I don't think it's actually fair to even blame the postman. It's just a stupid and very broken system caused by decades of nobody taking charge of addressing.

If the postman can't check whether the housename on the house matches the housename on the envelope match, I suspect he will be unable to check a numbering system matches.

oscarBravo

Bayberry wrote: »

How about the blithe assertion that we could have avoided these problems by putting enough structure into the code that these problems don't arise in the first place?

You could have coded small areas into the code, and run into the problems that were hand-waved away earlier with doing so, as well as still not pleasing Aimead because it doesn't identify every tree in the country. You could have coded it as an algorithmic geocode, and run into the problem that An Post would have vetoed it.

This is what I'm talking about: the assertion that we could have had a better code by solely focusing on whatever aspect of it is important to whomever happens to be complaining about it at the time; the assertion that there was the possibility to design a code that would have worked perfectly for all applications.

It's like the reflexive criticism by the GOP of the nuclear deal with Iran. When asked what deal should have been arrived at, they say "a better one". Well, gee. Thanks for the insight.

diomed

The eirocde.ie website is very bland and uninformative.
Is there a list of area codes and areas anywhere (the first three digits of the eircode).?

Trouwe Ier

oscarBravo wrote: »

I strongly sympathise with the desire to have properly-numbered houses on properly-named streets. In Denmark, every road has a name - even rural roads - and every house has a number, and every house has a postal service-approved mailbox at a postal service-approved external location, and every mailbox has the names of the mail recipients, and if any of these things are not the case, the mail just doesn't get delivered, end of.

But this isn't Denmark, and we're not Danish.

In Denmark, people pay for water. They don't cross the street until there's a green man at the signal. They write to the government when they move home, and the government in turn tells the utility companies what their new address is, and informs them who their new GP will be, and which school their children will be attending.

Why do we keep getting Irish solutions? Because we keep creating Irish problems.

I agree with the vast majority of the above but I would state that I lived in Cos. Antrim and Down for a while. Rural roads were named. There were clearly legible road name plates at headlight height (even the bi-lingual ones in South Down were clearly legible) and houses were numbered on rural roads. This wasn't Nordic (or even Nordie) nous: merely common sense. However, Fermanagh rebelled against this logic!

SpaceTime wrote: »

We've even managed to do it in brand new, huge business parks like Sandyford!

Loads of businesses in Sandyford give you an address like

Microsoft
The Atrium Building
Sandyford Industrial Estate
Dublin 18

That's not actually an address, it's a vague description of the fact that you are in one of several hundred buildings in a huge industrial estate.

You need a house number / building number and street name to find anything in any kind of reasonable manner.

We have a situation here which is actually something that commonly faces developing world countries and slums.
I'm not being melodramatic or Ireland bashing here either, it's a major issue that has been resolved in slums and shantytowns where people don't have addresses by using code systems like Eircode (although usually with structure) to deliver to delivery points./[/url]

Agree fully with that. There are similar examples in industrial estates and "business parks" all over the republic. Not great for coming to business meetings. The North Circular Road in Limerick is an absolute disgrace in this regard too. Hundreds upon hundreds of individually named houses with some renamed after change of ownership and some names similar to those of other names on the same road.

diomed wrote: »

The eirocde.ie website is very bland and uninformative.
Is there a list of area codes and areas anywhere (the first three digits of the eircode).?

Try Ossian Smith's web blog on the topic. He is a Green Party Councillor in Dún Laoíghaire Rathdown.

Sam Russell

Carawaystick wrote: »

If the postman can't check whether the housename on the house matches the housename on the envelope match, I suspect he will be unable to check a numbering system matches.

Well, a postman has the letters sorted into numeric order (most people can do that without prior knowledge) but how do you sort either random house names or random postcodes into order?

You can't!

diomed

It looks like An Post designed Eircodes to hinder every other organisation.
Am I a cynical old guy?

Bayberry

oscarBravo wrote: »

You could have coded small areas into the code, and run into the problems that were hand-waved away earlier with doing so, as well as still not pleasing Aimead because it doesn't identify every tree in the country. You could have coded it as an algorithmic geocode, and run into the problem that An Post would have vetoed it.

This is what I'm talking about: the assertion that we could have had a better code by solely focusing on whatever aspect of it is important to whomever happens to be complaining about it at the time; the assertion that there was the possibility to design a code that would have worked perfectly for all applications.

You're the one making the assertions - "the problem that An Post would have vetoed it".

That's a policy issue - and given that one of the reasons for introducing a postcode in the first place was to address open-market issues, it's a policy issue that should have been nailed from the very beginning.

It also ignores the fact that An Posts legacy impositions only affect the routing key part of the code - if anything, the random aspect of the 2nd part of the eircode is actually a hindrance to An Post, as neatly outlined in the example above.

It's also ironic that the people who take the attitude "feckit, it'll do" are castigating others for being "typical Irish begrudgers".

Bayberry

diomed wrote: »

Is there a list of area codes and areas anywhere (the first three digits of the eircode).?

Apparently, that's "commercially sensitive information", not to be released to the likes of you and me!

The information is being crowdsourced herehttp://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057461829.

SpaceTime

Carawaystick wrote: »

If the postman can't check whether the housename on the house matches the housename on the envelope match, I suspect he will be unable to check a numbering system matches.

I'd say there's far more of a chance of accuracy.

Try delivery to an area you're not 100% familar with as a new postman where there are possibly hundreds of houses all close together, all with names and in some cases totally illogical numbers that aren't always displayed.

We even have people doing the name & street thing without any house name !!

So items for "Mrs Murphy" end up at one of 8 other Mrs Murphys

I honestly don't think this is excusable or justifiable - it's shanty town address systems in a developed urban area in Western Europe.

The root cause of this is a legacy of incompetence in how local government and planning was done.

Any competent local authority system would have numbered buildings at planning stage and retrospectively numbered older builds as urban areas developed.

You're looking at a century or more of just nobody being bothered and treating urban areas like rural areas.

I actually get the sense sometimes that an element of Irish administration actually dislikes urbanity and tries to make it look and seem rural.

It's worrying that people can't even see the need for a basic system!

oscarBravo

Bayberry wrote: »

You're the one making the assertions - "the problem that An Post would have vetoed it".

That's a policy issue - and given that one of the reasons for introducing a postcode in the first place was to address open-market issues, it's a policy issue that should have been nailed from the very beginning.

If your starting point for the design of a postal system is that it should actively work against the interests of the universal service provider for postal delivery, we'll agree to differ.

And that's leaving aside the other problem with a geocode: if you want to use it to group and sort deliveries, you have to convert it to a latitude and longitude and then feed that information into a route optimisation system of some kind. There seems to be a vague belief that if you recursively divide the country into a grid of squares, then you can use those squares for sorting and sequencing of deliveries without reference to a road map.

So the geocode gets converted to a lat/long and fed into a further processing step. If only - oh, if only - there was some way to do that with Eircodes.

Sam Russell

Does anyone know why Eircode uses a subset of 139 post towns when An Post has over 2,000 such towns? Also, why the delivery districts the routing codes refer to are not contiguous and also so shapeless?

If the routing keys were more numerous and so the districts were smaller, then a lot of criticism would be less strident.

ukoda

Didn't these guys pass a motion to scrap eircode...

https://twitter.com/waterfordcounci/status/627031331298480128

Aimead

oscarBravo wrote: »

Actually, that question is disingenuous: it implies that none of the functionality of a geocode is present in an Eircode.

Are you seriously trying to insinuate that the routing keys are in any way comparable to the wealth of functionality that a geocode would bring? Wow. Just wow.

…but that doesn't change the fact that it's a postal code, not a location code.

And why are you considering a location code distinct from a postal code? A geocode can perfectly fine as a postal code as has been hashed out, again and again, in this very thread.

That doesn't mean that Eircodes are an eVotingesque disaster, just because they can't be used for email delivery. That question is the very definition of disingenuous.

So pointing out that a postal code cannot help with many deliveries is being disingenuous? Seriously? Good luck selling that one.

…but if Eircodes weren't a good match for An Post's business model, they'd just have to suck it up and change their business model to suit.

This claim wasn’t try the first time you made it and still isn’t true now. A simple parser to detect when a geocode is in which routing area is a very far cry from having “to suck it up and change their business model to suit”. I can only shake my head at just how ridiculous your claims are becoming.

Only in Ireland could people possibly get their knickers in a twist over the idea that a postcode system would be designed to facilitate the national postal service.

You do realise that some sort of argumentation on your part is needed to support the premise that ‘An-Post cannot work with a geocode’. I’m still waiting for that one.

---

SpaceTime wrote: »

Actually, no postal code could solve it because it's not a sorting or routing problem.

Why wouldn’t a geocode with sufficient accuracy help solve the particular scenario you describe? Am I missing something?

---

oscarBravo wrote: »

…. I'm arguing with the assertion that it's completely useless.

Good to know I’m up against a strawman.

oscarBravo wrote: »

You could have coded small areas into the code, and run into the problems that were hand-waved away earlier with doing so….

I have answered in previous posts, comprehensively, every objection I have thus far seen levelled at using a geocode. If you would be so good as to either find fault with what I have written or point out a problem I didn’t address then feel free. Because, as it looks to me right now, I’m not the one doing the handwacing.

You could have coded it as an algorithmic geocode, and run into the problem that An Post would have vetoed it.

So let me see if I understand the logic here. If An Post were set on a system that suited them, and only them, and insisted that the system be designed to be as useless as possible to all other entities, the system should be approved because they might veto it? Am I understanding you correctly? Given what Eircode turned out to be the previous rhetoric isn’t so far astray.

….the assertion that there was the possibility to design a code that would have worked perfectly for all applications.

This one really is a strawman. My claim, and to be frank this was reflected in the submissions I read during the consultation process, was that a geocode would give functionality, would be interoperable with existing systems and would serve a wide range of uses across disparate industries as a piece of national infrastructure.

That functionality was thrown out the window for reasons that, at least as far as this thread is concerned, don’t stand up against a monocle of scrutiny.

oscarBravo wrote: »

If your starting point for the design of a postal system is that it should actively work against the interests of the universal service provider for postal delivery, we'll agree to differ.

Any chance for some evidence supporting that assertion?

And that's leaving aside the other problem with a geocode: if you want to use it to group and sort deliveries, you have to convert it to a latitude and longitude and then feed that information into a route optimisation system of some kind.

Do you not see how, if the geocode was an algorithmic conversion from say GPS, that process becomes piss easy? How you could do it without the need for specialised software (I’d be able to do in excel with waypointing for example)?

Do you not also see how, with reference to the comparison with UK postcodes a few pages back, you can infer a substantial amount of information by visual inspection alone?

Do you also see how, by being unable to locate unindexed locations, Eircode functionality is dramatically reduced?

Fun thought experiment. Had a geocode been used then Google Maps would have had support for it the day it launched. That sort of interoperability is crippled with the use of pseudorandom digits. But geocodes are apparently bad and we must take, as an article of faith, that An Post is incapable of using a geocode.

ukoda

Aimead wrote: »

Are you seriously trying to insinuate that the routing keys are in any way comparable to the wealth of functionality that a geocode would bring? Wow. Just wow.
And why are you considering a location code distinct from a postal code? A geocode can perfectly fine as a postal code as has been hashed out, again and again, in this very thread.
So pointing out that a postal code cannot help with many deliveries is being disingenuous? Seriously? Good luck selling that one.
This claim wasn’t try the first time you made it and still isn’t true now. A simple parser to detect when a geocode is in which routing area is a very far cry from having “to suck it up and change their business model to suit”. I can only shake my head at just how ridiculous your claims are becoming.
You do realise that some sort of argumentation on your part is needed to support the premise that ‘An-Post cannot work with a geocode’. I’m still waiting for that one.

---

Why wouldn’t a geocode with sufficient accuracy help solve the particular scenario you describe? Am I missing something?

---

Good to know I’m up against a strawman.

I have answered in previous posts, comprehensively, every objection I have thus far seen levelled at using a geocode. If you would be so good as to either find fault with what I have written or point out a problem I didn’t address then feel free. Because, as it looks to me right now, I’m not the one doing the handwacing.
So let me see if I understand the logic here. If An Post were set on a system that suited them, and only them, and insisted that the system be designed to be as useless as possible to all other entities, the system should be approved because they might veto it? Am I understanding you correctly? Given what Eircode turned out to be the previous rhetoric isn’t so far astray.
This one really is a strawman. My claim, and to be frank this was reflected in the submissions I read during the consultation process, was that a geocode would give functionality, would be interoperable with existing systems and would serve a wide range of uses across disparate industries as a piece of national infrastructure.

That functionality was thrown out the window for reasons that, at least as far as this thread is concerned, don’t stand up against a monocle of scrutiny.

Any chance for some evidence supporting that assertion?
Do you not see how, if the geocode was an algorithmic conversion from say GPS, that process becomes piss easy? How you could do it without the need for specialised software (I’d be able to do in excel with waypointing for example)?

Do you not also see how, with reference to the comparison with UK postcodes a few pages back, you can infer a substantial amount of information by visual inspection alone?

Do you also see how, by being unable to locate unindexed locations, Eircode functionality is dramatically reduced?

Fun thought experiment. Had a geocode been used then Google Maps would have had support for it the day it launched. That sort of interoperability is crippled with the use of pseudorandom digits. But geocodes are apparently bad and we must take, as an article of faith, that An Post is incapable of using a geocode.

Do you not see ericode is here now and it won't be going anywhere

Do you not see this whole argument is pointless

Do you not see that eircode will be of huge benefit to a vast array of businesses and the general public

Do you not see that if you don't like eircode, you don't have to use it.

FishOnABike

oscarBravo wrote: »

And that's leaving aside the other problem with a geocode: if you want to use it to group and sort deliveries, you have to convert it to a latitude and longitude and then feed that information into a route optimisation system of some kind.

Rather than being a problem this is one of the strengths of a geocode based system. It imposes no predefined boundaries or routing constraints. Any operator can group locations whatever way they wish to suit their own logistics without the predefined constraints of routing areas which might not match their logistics needs.

oscarBravo wrote: »

There seems to be a vague belief that if you recursively divide the country into a grid of squares, then you can use those squares for sorting and sequencing of deliveries without reference to a road map.

This is a strawman. I indicated in a previous post how a geocode could be used to overlay a digital map to sort / route items taking geographic boundaries such as rivers, mountains etc. into account and use digital road maps to enable optimised dynamic routing.

oscarBravo wrote: »

So the geocode gets converted to a lat/long and fed into a further processing step. If only - oh, if only - there was some way to do that with Eircodes.

Nobody has asserted eircodes cannot be translated to lat/long. The difference is that with eircode the user is locked in to paying for eircode's ECAF and ECAD database products with a geocode it could be calculated for free if an open system had been selected.

FishOnABike

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see ericode is here now and it won't be going anywhere

Do you not see this whole argument is pointless

Do you not see that eircode will be of huge benefit to a vast array of businesses and the general public

Do you not see that if you don't like eircode, you don't have to use it.

Do you not see that a better designed code would be more benefit and provide more functionality to a greater array of businesses and the general public.

Calina

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see ericode is here now and it won't be going anywhere

You mean like water charges are here and they won't be going anywhere?

Please, get a grip. The fact that an attempt is being made to impose something doesn't mean we're stuck with it forever. The sane, sensible and non-stupid thing might be to admit that in fact, Eircodes, as designed, are not adequate to the needs of a lot of people who were hoping to use them to aid deliveries and navigation.

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see this whole argument is pointless

People are entitled to their opinion. Quite frankly, a position of "you're stuck with it and voicing your opinion is pointless" is childish in the extreme. The other point you might want to consider is that the poster in question appears to be fairly competent in his field.

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see that eircode will be of huge benefit to a vast array of businesses and the general public

Personal view is that its use will only be aided by a physical sign attached to the gates with the bloody thing on it.

ukoda wrote: »

Do you not see that if you don't like eircode, you don't have to use it.

That's not inline with "it's here now, live with it".

We're stuck with it. Congratulations. I thought the country had moved on from yerrah it'll be grand.

It isn't grand but we're still stuck with it.

ukoda

FishOnABike wrote: »

Do you not see that a better designed code would be more benefit and provide more functionality to a greater array of businesses and the general public.

"Better designed" is a subjective term dictated by your point of view

I'm happy out with eircode

ukoda

Calina wrote: »

You mean like water charges are here and they won't be going anywhere?

Please, get a grip. The fact that an attempt is being made to impose something doesn't mean we're stuck with it forever. The sane, sensible and non-stupid thing might be to admit that in fact, Eircodes, as designed, are not adequate to the needs of a lot of people who were hoping to use them to aid deliveries and navigation.



People are entitled to their opinion. Quite frankly, a position of "you're stuck with it and voicing your opinion is pointless" is childish in the extreme. The other point you might want to consider is that the poster in question appears to be fairly competent in his field.



Personal view is that its use will only be aided by a physical sign attached to the gates with the bloody thing on it.



That's not inline with "it's here now, live with it".

We're stuck with it. Congratulations. I thought the country had moved on from yerrah it'll be grand.

It isn't grand but we're still stuck with it.

Multi quoting, you just really be worked up

I'm just saying that ericode isn't going to be scrapped, it isn't going to be redesigned.

If you want to moan about it, go ahead, I never said stop, I did however say it will be a fruitless discussion. But it's your time and effort, you can choose to use it to post whatever you want, I'm entitled to voice my opinion that you won't change anything about ericode by doing so.

recedite

MBSnr wrote: »

sesswhat wrote: »

You can resize your desktop browser window and the Directions button will appear below a certain width value.

Thanks! I also noticed (others may have too) that with a few clicks you can get the GPS location from the Google maps desktop sent to your android device for navigation.

1. Eircode Finder - resize window to get directions link (Turn off adblockplus as it blocks the buttons)

2. Click directions and you'll get the red pointer on the map - but there's no means of sending it to the device (like you can with place names).

3. So right click the map just right next to red pointer and select 'What's here?' A box appears in google maps top left - says unnamed road or road name/area. Click the name (not the GPS numbers!) and there listed is the 'Send to device' link.

4. Choose your device from the drop down menu (They are sometimes named differently than you expect).

Ok its bizarre, but it works. When you shrink the browser window to a certain size the print option gets replaced with the directions option.
And more importantly, at step 2. the OSI map gets replaced with a Google map, which carries more functionality.
Having got as far as 3. above, you can also take note of the GPS numbers and transfer them manually into your sat nav.
OK, its a lot more cumbersome and error prone than a purpose designed location code system, but its a workaround, and it works. Not sure how many people in the general public are going to work all this out though.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

Ok its bizarre, but it works. When you shrink the browser window to a certain size the print option gets replaced with the directions option.
And more importantly, at step 2. the OSI map gets replaced with a Google map, which carries more functionality.
Having got as far as 3. above, you can also take note of the GPS numbers and transfer them manually into your sat nav.
OK, its a lot more cumbersome and error prone than a purpose designed location code system, but its a workaround, and it works. Not sure how many people in the general public are going to work all this out though.

Well I would imagine the wait to be able to use it directly in google maps will be a short enough one

moyners

recedite wrote: »

Ok its bizarre, but it works. When you shrink the browser window to a certain size the print option gets replaced with the directions option.
And more importantly, at step 2. the OSI map gets replaced with a Google map, which carries more functionality.
Having got as far as 3. above, you can also take note of the GPS numbers and transfer them manually into your sat nav.
OK, its a lot more cumbersome and error prone than a purpose designed location code system, but its a workaround, and it works. Not sure how many people in the general public are going to work all this out though.

I was doing it all morning for a project I'm doing with a spreadsheet full of business addresses that I need to put coordinates to. I've even got an excel formula converting the google maps address into lat long coordinates. Bit of a balls but it is great for working out exact locations from vague addresses. Would be so much easier if there was already native google maps support though.

FishOnABike

ukoda wrote: »

"Better designed" is a subjective term dictated by your point of view

I'm happy out with eircode

Others have pointed out it's shortcomings and where and how it could have been made more accessible and useful. This should be possible without impacting the functionality you are happy with. Some want more than a system which appears to be a self serving mediocre monopoly.

There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

FishOnABike

moyners wrote: »

I was doing it all morning for a project I'm doing with a spreadsheet full of business addresses that I need to put coordinates to. I've even got an excel formula converting the google maps address into lat long coordinates. Bit of a balls but it is great for working out exact locations from vague addresses. Would be so much easier if there was already native google maps support though.

Imagine how easy it would be if you could just use a formula or macro to calculate the lat/long form each post-code but some people still seem to think the semi random opaque code that forces a paid for database look up for each post-code we currently have is the best we could have done.

ukoda

FishOnABike wrote: »

Others have pointed out it's shortcomings and where and how it could have been made more accessible and useful. This should be possible without impacting the functionality you are happy with. Some want more than a system which appears to be a self serving mediocre monopoly.

There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

I have a car, it does what I need and want it to do, I understand there are buses out there that are bigger and better equipped than my car (more seats, a toilet, bigger engine, nice headroom)

But I don't need a bus.

If I need a bus, the fact that a car exisits doesn't exclude me from using a bus.
The same way that if I needed to use a loc8 code, eircodes exisitence doesn't prevent me from using it.

Although, after I looked at what loc8 are doing on Twitter, I have now decided to use ABLOC8*

*Anything But Loc8

ukoda

FishOnABike wrote: »

Imagine how easy it would be if you could just use a formula or macro to calculate the lat/long form each post-code but some people still seem to think the semi random opaque code that forces a paid for database look up for each post-code we currently have is the best we could have done.

I think you missed the key word in his post "addressess". geocodes such as loc8 don't match to addresses uniquely

moyners

FishOnABike wrote: »

Imagine how easy it would be if you could just use a formula or macro to calculate the lat/long form each post-code but some people still seem to think the semi random opaque code that forces a paid for database look up for each post-code we currently have is the best we could have done.

That would be great, but I'm a realist and this is what we have now...

ukoda wrote: »

I think you missed the key word in his post "addressess". geocodes such as loc8 don't match to addresses uniquely

This is true, the main reason it's useful is because the geodirectory has the coordinates and whereas when I was doing this before I had the geodirectory website open in one window and google maps in the other trying to match up the exact location, the workaround the previous poster mentioned lets me do that more quickly.

If there was a directory of addresses mapped to Loc8 codes it would probably do the same thing. Although, this morning I did notice that when looking for one business' address they had a Loc8 code on their website - so off I went to Loc8 to get the coordinates. I couldn't - it would plot it on their embedded google maps api on the loc8 website but I had to open another instance of google maps and match the location to get the coordinates I needed.

Just to keep things neutral

I should just point out also that the project is academic and I definitely couldn't afford €5k to buy an eircode ECAD!

FishOnABike

moyners wrote: »

I was doing it all morning for a project I'm doing with a spreadsheet full of business addresses that I need to put coordinates to. I've even got an excel formula converting the google maps address into lat long coordinates. Bit of a balls but it is great for working out exact locations from vague addresses. Would be so much easier if there was already native google maps support though.

Imagine how easy it would be if you could just use a formula or macro to calculate the lat/long form each post-code but some people still seem to think the semi random opaque code that forces a paid for database look up for each post-code we currently have is the best we could have done.

ukoda wrote: »

I think you missed the key word in his post "addressess". geocodes such as loc8 don't match to addresses uniquely

I don't think I missed anything. There was no indication of a need to match codes to addresses uniquely. The requirement was to put coordinates to business addresses. And yes multiple businesses can have the same coordinates/location - think of the solicitor or accountant's office which is the address for multiple shell companies.

ukoda

moyners wrote: »

I should just point out also that the project is academic and I definitely couldn't afford €5k to buy an eircode ECAD!

That €5k figure was banded around as incorrect info by eircode detractors

Have a look at the eircode pricing guide on their website to see what the cost of the product you'd need would actually cost you

moyners

FishOnABike wrote: »

I don't think I missed anything. There was no indication of a need to match codes to addresses uniquely. The requirement was to put coordinates to business addresses. And yes multiple businesses can have the same coordinates/location - think of the solicitor or accountant's office which is the address for multiple shell companies.

Sorry, yes the database is the most useful. Some businesses have a rural address - some give a townland but as I'm not familiar with the business I haven't a notion where in the townland that business is. Sometime they're not even in that townland but in the one next to it. Geodirectory is very good (most of the time) at giving a precise location.

But yes, I agree with your particular point that this could also be accomplished with an official list of one Loc8/openpostcode etc. per delivery point.