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Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#81

Post by PinguTS »

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…

AFAIK, this is required in the US. If you call 911 they can request your GPS position. All cell phones for that reason are required to do GPS. Even simple feature phones can do GPS in some way. They can acquire the GPS signal and then will forward that to the cell tower, which then is able to do the required calculations to translate that in coordinates. Somewhere around that line it was working, IRC.

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#82

Post by jonatron »

sneak wrote: post #80
jonatron wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The word list

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#83

Post by dang »

Recent and related:

Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27058271 - May 2021 (35 comments)

Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27029706 - May 2021 (3 comments)

What3Words: App used by emergency services under scrutiny - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26985759 - April 2021 (14 comments)

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#84

Post by g_p »

irjustin wrote: post #4

I don't envy the team. It's a great idea but falls short once it leaves the lab. Everything gets really dirty in the real world especially during high stress or emergencies. Moving to four words could really help remove the need for plural and words that sound similar. Accents really do make things tough.

I am surprised they've never tried to introduce some kind of erasure coding or error correction coding. A 4th word from a finite set could act as a "check word" that would detect wrong order of words, mis-spellings of words etc.

I also feel like the solution W3W is trying to deliver is a short term patch until we get emergency SMS location from phones themselves delivered to the control room - having in band spoken location works until you have that, but W3W leaves a lot to be desired. Given it is an app, it might be easier for it to show the user words to read, which are themselves all just NATO phonetic alphabet words to spell their location. You'll get far more redundancy and human error correction over the voice channel using the phonetic alphabet than words.

It wouldn't be as shiny a solution though, and that probably doesn't play into W3W's marketing strategy... Even if it would help save more lives.

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#85

Post by jokoon »

I always thought that a combination of a geohash-like z order curve over a 15km radius, with an offline gps coordinates list of the 5000 most populated cities on earth would be sufficient to cover 99% of people on earth.

Not sure what's the average number of characters required for a 20m to 100m precision with such method.

It's true that the idea of plus codes of using city names makes a lot of sense.

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#87

Post by sneak »

jonatron wrote: post #82
sneak wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What copyrighted work was it infringing upon?

The word list

In the UK, my understanding is that "skill, labour, and judgment" have to be involved in the compilation of a list for it to be eligible for copyright.

TFA seems to suggest that this isn't such a list.

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#88

Post by PeterisP »

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…

It's less about difference between words and numbers for encoding information and about the fact that what3words have chosen a very, very bad way of reliably encoding information in words. With their set of words there is an extreme risk of error and miscommunication, searching for a solution makes sense but their particular solution is not it.

There's a lot of research on how to choose words to ensure reliability of communication and reduce risk of misunderstandings, for example, the criteria used for Aviation Phonetic Alphabet - and what3words fails to take all that into account.

You don't want separate things that are pronounced nearly the same, what3words fails in this regard as it contains many pairs like wants/once, secretary/secretory, ordinance/ordnance.

You'd want a person that can reconfirm that word multiple to be certain that they've got that right, but what3words includes singular and plural wordforms (e.g. leader/leaders) which has caused miscommunication even when the responder has understood that they've got the right concept for the word or when the person who recites the three words from memory mistakenly thinks they've memorized it right.

You'd want to ensure that the words are limited to a set of sounds that are clearly pronouncable and understandable by non-native speakers of different backgrounds, what3words does not even attempt that.

In short, the particular system is poorly designed and fundamentally flawed because of that.

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#89

Post by m12k »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #66
m12k wrote: post #51

Sounds like they need to prune the word list and/or group together possible mispronunciations, misspellings and misreadings. If "correct horse battery" is a location, then "correct hose battery" and "correct house battery" need to be synonyms of the same location, not alternate locations. Either that or remove horse, hose and house from the word list entirely.

Shouldn't those things be as far apart as possible? Then the conversation would be Person: "emm, I'm lost on the Yorkshire Moors...". Rescuer: "no problem sir, just take advantage of the completely flawless wireless telephony system we have to download this app..." Person: "ok, it says I'm at correct house battery" Rescuer: "hmm, I'm showing you at the top of a mountain in Nepal. Let's try that again..."

I think if this is to be used by emergency services, then the time it takes to go "Let's try that again..." could mean the difference between life and death. I'd rather the system were designed in a way not just to make human error detectable, but rather make it not an error in the first place. (and I assume you're joking about asking someone to download an app they don't already have while on a call with emergency services, that can obviously never be the best solution)

Re: Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies

#90

Post by tiew9Vii »

jokoon wrote: post #72
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...

I was thinking the exact same thing.

With a geohash someone only needs to provide 7 to 9 characters depending where they are and the accuracy needed.

Also as each additional character in the hash adds accuracy it should be easy for an operator to easily sanity check i.e caller to operator "I am hiking in the lake district...my geohash is ..." the operator only needs the first four characters to confirm if the general location is correct or not.

I guess it's still prone to spelling errors from operators inputting the data from a call.

As others say if you are installing an app to give you a location i.e. a geohash you can use an app to give a lat/lng.

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