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Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#71

Post by PinguTS »

tomcooks wrote: post #47
moooo99 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are really are issues with such a system and you listed some of them, but your recommendation makes me feel like you didn't read beyond the headline. They need a way to transfer location data by the word of mouth, which is extremely difficult when you're using numbers. With longer numbers, such as a comparatively precise location, you have a high risk of errors on both ends, so searching for a solution makes ab…

Why would I read only the headline and comment? To gain imaginary internet points which I can spend literally nowhere? No worries my friend, I don't have ADHD and can read 2 minutes long articles. It's not clear to me how a stupid system like this is used in favour of, say, 5 numbers+5 numbers (4 decimals coordinates lead to a ~5.5m radius) I'm not sure I understand what you mean with "high risk of errors on both end…

In military your are speaking about trained people to use proper pronunciation to eliminate disambiguation.

In rescue we are talking about untrained people how give an initial communication by word of mouth. This data is then translated to coordinates and then communication by then trained people in the chain of rescue.

So the problem is this initial communication by untrained people.

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#72

Post by jokoon »

tomcooks wrote: post #33

Terrible: based on a single language, proprietary, IP owners being assholes, creates problems to the user case it was supposedly designed for, doesn't feature distance computing algorithms, takes even more space in a DB cell than latlong, I can go on for days. Use numbers.

What about geohash?

Not sure it's good enough over a crappy phone line...

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#73

Post by Kwpolska »

aaron695 wrote: post #29

> jump.legend.warblers which was in Vietnam So they knew exactly that it was wrong. So it worked perfectly. If you want to be hip you could write a program to work out what was actually said given other information, ie what cell tower it came from. I hate 3 words, I can't remember why, maybe it was copyright or something, but this article isn't selling why it's a problem. Rescuers will also get all the normal info li…

>> jump.legend.warblers which was in Vietnam

> So they knew exactly that it was wrong. So it worked perfectly.

Okay, but what if they got the invalid location and then the caller disconnected? Calling them back might be difficult. And if you do get the caller to repeat, can you now be sure that "jump.legends.warbler", which is in the UK, wasn't supposed to be "jump.legends.warblers", which is also in the UK? And how many cases are there that they didn’t mention, which were in the correct country, but a few kilometers off the real location?

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#74

Post by avh02 »

tomcooks wrote: post #47
moooo99 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are really are issues with such a system and you listed some of them, but your recommendation makes me feel like you didn't read beyond the headline. They need a way to transfer location data by the word of mouth, which is extremely difficult when you're using numbers. With longer numbers, such as a comparatively precise location, you have a high risk of errors on both ends, so searching for a solution makes ab…

Why would I read only the headline and comment? To gain imaginary internet points which I can spend literally nowhere? No worries my friend, I don't have ADHD and can read 2 minutes long articles. It's not clear to me how a stupid system like this is used in favour of, say, 5 numbers+5 numbers (4 decimals coordinates lead to a ~5.5m radius) I'm not sure I understand what you mean with "high risk of errors on both end…

have you ever tried providing a phone number/account number/id number over the phone? how easily/correctly was it transferred?

Now add in hypothermia, noise, weather, or bodily harm to that equation.

The only improvement would be if the app could provide the NATO phonetic alphabet version of your coordinates to you - but you're not going to remember those without looking at your screen while talking - which is multitasking in a situation that you probably aren't going to do it well in.

Finally, the verbal transfer time is about 1/3.

I don't like this thing for the reasons provided (proprietary and clearly has issues), but would rather see this in use than trying to provide ten numbers while bleeding out.

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#75

Post by rich_sasha »

moooo99 wrote: post #40
tomcooks wrote: post #33

Terrible: based on a single language, proprietary, IP owners being assholes, creates problems to the user case it was supposedly designed for, doesn't feature distance computing algorithms, takes even more space in a DB cell than latlong, I can go on for days. Use numbers.

There are really are issues with such a system and you listed some of them, but your recommendation makes me feel like you didn't read beyond the headline. They need a way to transfer location data by the word of mouth, which is extremely difficult when you're using numbers. With longer numbers, such as a comparatively precise location, you have a high risk of errors on both ends, so searching for a solution makes ab…

> Nevertheless, based on the proprietary IP maybe the rescue services should consider building an own solution or evaluating open source alternatives if there are any

Weren’t there a bunch of people trying to do exactly that (FOSS, translatable etc) only to get sued or as-good-as by what3words?

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#76

Post by drran »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #58
drran wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It uses Latin alphabet. Most countries with Latin alphabet have an address system already in place for centuries.

https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_addresses_in_the_Republ...

I mean, if receiver will write a text in the address box, then parcel will be delivered to him.

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#77

Post by g_p »

blkhawk wrote: post #18

I wonder if a more efficient system for this kind of use-case would be possible by giving up on "global" positioning. by relying on context you can lower the area you need to have address combinations for. In practice you would simply repeat the addresses every couple of 1000km or so. needing help and calling in rescue from the other side of the world while also being unable to say you are in such and such area is pr…

In addition, the user knows their own location by virtue of having access to a GPS device - for W3W to work they've used a GPS and it's really just an in-band voice protocol for exchange of location.

It strikes me that W3W will eventually be replaced by the emergency location standards built into mobile which effectively SMS your location to the control centre on starting the call. Then there's little need for voice based W3W exchange - at best it could be a dialogue between caller and call handler to confirm the approximate area and location, and to take details like (for urban environments) if it's an apartment block or house etc. Or off the beaten track, which side of the mountain route they walked up to reach their current location.

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#78

Post by md_ »

onion2k wrote: post #63
sandGorgon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making a mistake with a code may simply display somewhere else - for example, on What3Words, "banana rabbit monkey" is a location in Argentina, "banana monkey rabbit" is in Russia.

That's a problem if you don't know anything more than the three words, but it's quite useful if you do. For example, if you know someone is travelling in South America then the huge difference means one is obviously wrong. It would be more problematic if the two locations were similar. Making it clear when something is incorrect for a given context is quite a helpful feature. But you need to have the necessary contex…

Does W3W offer an easy way to see the locations of potential typos? E.g. can you put in a country constraint and have W3W give you the most similar (by edit distance, word swaps, etc) locations to the one you input that match that constraint?

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#79

Post by OxO4 »

another-dave wrote: post #46
moooo99 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are really are issues with such a system and you listed some of them, but your recommendation makes me feel like you didn't read beyond the headline. They need a way to transfer location data by the word of mouth, which is extremely difficult when you're using numbers. With longer numbers, such as a comparatively precise location, you have a high risk of errors on both ends, so searching for a solution makes ab…

Though What 3 Words requires you to download a custom app & for the emergency services to use a back-end for the same app when handling incoming calls — if we're doing that, could we not just have a simple app that checks your GPS and then dials 999 with your lat/lng added to the phone number? My bank get me to key in my sort code & account number while using telephone banking. If we did the same here, we could get t…

There's a standard for automatically sharing the current location with emergency services, which is supported by both Android and iOS [0]. According to the wiki article, the UK is even one of the countries that uses AML.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Location

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#80

Post by sneak »

jonatron wrote: post #69
sneak wrote: post #9

W3W is a proprietary algorithm that has threatened people who published analyses of their algorithm. They got whatfreewords.org censored for publishing an independent open implementation. It's also not well designed, as plurals and homophones are not accounted for. Avoid using or promoting this system.

The problem with the site you mentioned is that it was a clear cut case of copyright, trademark, and patent infringement all in one. I think the creator remained anonymous because they knew this. I agree that it's not well designed and shouldn't be used.

What copyrighted work was it infringing upon?
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