TOWARDS GOOD PRINCIPLES FOR THE DESIGN OF A NATIONAL ADDRESSING SCHEME

Abstract

Built Environment, CSIR, PO Box 395, Pretoria, 0001, South Africa, acooper@csir.co.za Abstract Traditionally, humans used an address as a direction to a building and its occupants. The advent of computers opened up a whole new range of possibilities, such as routing and vehicle navigation, automated processing of mail items, utility planning and maintenance, spatial demographic analysis and geo-marketing. Addressing schemes vary in different parts of the world, such as referencing to a road network or to a hierarchy of administrative areas; in informal settlements addresses can be informal, variable and creative. Addresses are used for a wide variety of purposes , often with conflicting needs, such as required geographical precision and accuracy. Various stakeholders are involved in both designing and maintaining an addressing scheme, including town planners, city managers, utility companies, postal operators and addressees. Some countries and international organizations have address standards and there is a process within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) looking at bringing them together into a suite of international standards for addressing. In this paper we present a number of issues that have to be considered when designing an addressing scheme. Drawing on these, we show that there is a trade-off between people, the physical world and its digital representation when designing an addressing scheme. Based on these findings, we list a number of good principles for the design of a national addressing scheme. 1. Introduction Traditionally, humans used an address as a direction to a building and its occupants. The notion of directing someone or something is evident in the origin of the word ‘address’, which is derived from the Latin directus , past participle of dirigere , to direct (Dictionary.com 2010). In Europe, street addresses were first assigned in the eighteenth century when cities started to expand and a need arose to identify individual buildings. The advent of computers opened up a whole new range of possibilities, such as routing and vehicle navigation, automated processing of mail items, utility planning and maintenance, spatial demographic analysis and geo-marketing. For all of these, digital address databases are required to ensure efficient and effective processing. Therefore it is relevant to now take a new look at principles for the design of addressing schemes that support these new possibilities. Addressing schemes vary in different parts of the world: in Euro-centric countries reference to a road network in the address is common; in eastern Asia a hierarchy of administrative areas without reference to a thoroughfare is used; and in informal settlements across the world the addresses are informal, variable and sometimes creative. This variety in schemes reflects the

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