“Where ?”
Asking place is very fundamental question in daily life. However, the answer to this question is not
always as simple as the answer to the question, “When?”
When people start having watch, and learn how to express it, such as “9:00 am”, society can move forward to era
of the Industrial Revolution. Before that, people follow the Sun and ‘Time’was always rough and not precise in
the era of Agriculture.
After 911 in 2001, importance of ‘locating’ someone is rising. Today, 2009, almost all mobile phone has GPS
locating device in most advanced countries. In a long history of human, it is the first time, or the first opportunity,
that people are able to know where they are exactly. Location Based Services (LBS) market is about to
expanding and Search and Rescue mission in natural disaster become more precise and effective.
However, traditional coordinate system, such as “Latitude North40.749370°and LongitudeWest073.968952°”
is not as easy as “9:00 am”. People still use ‘rough’ expressions such as “I’m in front of UN (Landmarks)” or
“My home is 2153-405 Kawaraguchi Kashiba (mailing address)” when they want to show ‘where’.
Recently various coding system are invented and introduced to show “Where”. All of them took slightly different
approach, but they all have a common goal – make ‘Where’ as simple/easy as possible. In this report, overview
of GEOCODEs is explained. In addition, some perspectives or criteria to evaluate GEOCODEs will be
introduced. The author of this report is an inventor who designed some of GEOCODE in this document and also
a researcher of GEOCODEs. This report is written as neutral as possible, and giving a general idea how you can
choose appropriate GEOCODE for your purpose.