National Postcodes to be introduced

larchill · 03-06-2014 3:23pm

With the eircode format: A12 B2CDE, the A12 part is the 'routing key'. In Dublin the existing postal areas will be used (ie D01, D02, etc).

According to www.eircode.ie, of the routing key: 'The letters will not be linked to a county or city name in English or Irish'. This is except for Dublin where as stated above the existing areas are to be used.

This is a pity (apart form Dublin) as it will not be possible to tell where in the country the eircode relates to. You can tell where a car is from from D, LH, MH, WW, etc. Would the same car reg county identifiers not be ideal for use here? Just use a number 1 to 9 after the code (eg: LH1, LH2, etc) & follow this with the unique identifier?

Splinter · 03-06-2014 4:33pm

I'm guessing it's to bypass the overlap with uk postcodes, but that's just my thinking

Impetus · 03-06-2014 6:16pm

The normal method of travel is ground based travel.

Someone starting off in Town 1 (eg Carlow) and heading for Town 2 (eg Drogheda) will firstly follow the signs for Drogheda. (There are no signs for postcodes – and it would be incredibly complicated to overlay postcodes on a signage system – especially alpha numeric ones.)

Having arrived at the destination town, one follows directions to the required street / road, and once on that street / road – one heads for the required building number.

What is missing now?

(a) About 40%+ of buildings have no street/road name or house number. A phenomenon normally encountered in the third world.
(b) Roughly the same number of buildings are on a street/road with no name.
(c) On some urban streets, while they may be numbered, the occupants of houses only use a “house name” (which is part of the needle in a haystack issue, especially on a long road).
(d) Existing urban street addresses are not part of a national postcode structure.

Keeping it simple and complying with European / global norms:

(1) Give urban addresses a national postcode:

eg 123 Northumberland Road
1004 Dublin

This retains the existing postal district numbering structure and street/road name. If the house has a name, they can continue to use it, but must show the building number too. If the person or company has a PO Box, a separate postcode should be allocated to the PO Box office where they collect the post - to help ensure that mail that should go to the po box goes there, and is not put in their letterbox etc. Large users of the post might have a unique (non-geographic) postcode for particular types of correspondence - eg a bank might chose to have a unique postcode for its credit card operations - different to its general postcode for the head office or whatever.

(2) Give rural addresses a road name and building number:
Ms Jane Doe
Ballyboe East
Anytown
Co Town

Would become:

Ms Jane Doe
300 Ballyboe East Road
7828 Anytown

Her neighbour's address might become
501 Ballyboe East Road
7828 Anytown

The neighbour would be 200 m away from her on the opposite side of the road (ie subtract building numbers for the distance between them in metres, with odd on one side and even numbers on the other).

All houses in the same locality would have the same published postcode (7828)

For “statistical purposes” a non-published premises code – say another four digits might be appended.

This full 8 digit postcode could be rapidly derived where required using an AJAX/JSON lookup – where one would enter the 4 digit postcode and the town name would auto-populate. Moving to the road/street field, entering the first character or two of the road name would produce a dropdown list of possible streets in that town whose name began with the first few characters entered. This would display the building's full 8 digit postcode + premises code.

The benefits of this would be user-friendliness and simplicity. Virtually everybody would know their postcode because everybody in the same patch would be 7828 or whatever.

Everybody would know what road they lived on and their house number. As they do now in urban addresses.

The full 8 digit “statistical codes” list could be sold to businesses and others who have a need for same. Under terms and conditions which protect user privacy etc.

The Eircode is going down the Iranian police state route (the only other country to assign unique postcodes to each address). The coding system is in breach of the principles of the EU data protection laws (which require only the minimum amount of information to be collected for the required task). Post is sorted worldwide (aside from Iran) without premises specific postcodes. Statistics are gathered by governments worldwide with similar "limitations". There is no justification for this huge waste of money that will add zero to the economy. In a country where nearly half the buildings do not have a basic street/road address.

http://www.geonames.org/export/ajax-postalcode-autocomplete.html

SpaceTime · 03-06-2014 6:34pm

Singapore uses unique codes per building too.

I don't think it is likely to infringe upon EU rules considering that Belgium requires you to have your name on your door bell and to register yourself with the local town hall if you move.

The police even check the doorbells!!

Impetus · 03-06-2014 6:43pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

Singapore uses unique codes per building too.

I don't think it is likely to infringe upon EU rules considering that Belgium requires you to have your name on your door bell and to register yourself with the local town hall if you move.

The police even check the doorbells!!

The Singapore code is unique to each building. Which in the case of Singapore generally means an apartment building which can have 30+ floors with several apartment units on each floor.

Furthermore the Singapore code is all numeric, which increases machine readability and reduces error rates and works across cultures.

Impetus · 03-06-2014 6:58pm

Splinter wrote: »

I can't speak for other carriers except DHL. The way the system currently works for Postcode countries is at a high level, a country and postcode(or city combination) return a 3 letter unique code and a 3 letter facility within that area. For example, London could be LHR LON (the second half can modify for each area in London). It can then break this down further internally where individual groups of postcodes then have an additional code that can be referenced for more precise routing.

This can be done for Postcodes accurately or cities with less accuracy, (for example, Dublin as a city would be less accurate than Abbey Street, the same would go for using Dubai, or a precise street).

UPS from what i believe use a similar system

I suspect the international courier companies use similar technology to An Post. ie the full address is scanned and assigned an AWB number. In the case of Ireland they can/could translate that scan into a grid reference (lat/long) for the building in question using the Geodirectory database.

They use this technology in the US to work out truck delivery routes causing them to avoid left-hand turns* on street intersections. Furthermore the packages are loaded on a truck in order of delivery arrival point - ie the computer works out the optimum route based on the lat/long of each package delivery address. ie the packages at the far end of the truck, deep down in the pile are destined for the end of the programmed delivery routing. The delivery agents can simply pick off the top / near to them packages as they move around the place.

Needless to say this does not require an Iranian style police state postcode system....

If there was a 4 or 5 digit postcode in Ireland couriers like DHL or An Post could use it on their websites for rapid address entry to create an AWB, or for pricing or delivery lead time estimation for customers. All that these applications require is a national postal district type code for each zone in the entire country. ie if the package is for someone in 1060 Dublin Airport it might be price x or if it had to be delivered to 6498 Dingle it might be price y.

*http://compass.ups.com/UPS-driver-avoid-left-turns/

Splinter · 04-06-2014 8:32am

Impetus wrote: »

If there was a 4 or 5 digit postcode in Ireland couriers like DHL or An Post could use it on their websites for rapid address entry to create an AWB, or for pricing or delivery lead time estimation for customers. All that these applications require is a national postal district type code for each zone in the entire country. ie if the package is for someone in 1060 Dublin Airport it might be price x or if it had to be delivered to 6498 Dingle it might be price y.

It depends on the pricing system in place i guess, many courier companies have a set price based on the country of delivery, not the area within that country. It will give a better delivery date and estimated delivery time I'll agree.

However, if you look at it from a data point of view. At present,many countries would use postcode ranges, using the UK for example:
EC1A - EC9A would be one area. This means you don't physically store the data for every postcode combination and you can require the second half of the postcode but not validate it.

Without using this, you're going to need 2.2 million postcode entries for IE alone, the data storage for this is massive and doesn't make sense in a situation where it's not required 100%. I can see certain situations where it will be crucial, emergency services, etc. But local courier knowledge and situations where the address is already provided along with the postcode, won't need this

Splinter

larchill · 04-06-2014 12:25pm

The whole trouble here is non unique addressing in rural areas: houses not numbered/roads not named. Using an general area code or range of postcodes will be of limited use! You'll still have to ask Micky Joe where Johnny thingy lives! This is the reason for eircodes which are unique to each address. In the eircode database, the geographical coordinates, northing-easting etc will be stored for each eircode. Entering the eircode into a satnav or internat based map on the eircode site will yield the exact location of the address.

Sam Russell · 04-06-2014 12:45pm

larchill wrote: »

The whole trouble here is non unique addressing in rural areas: houses not numbered/roads not named. Using an general area code or range of postcodes will be of limited use! You'll still have to ask Micky Joe where Johnny thingy lives! This is the reason for eircodes which are unique to each address. In the eircode database, the geographical coordinates, northing-easting etc will be stored for each eircode. Entering the eircode into a satnav or internat based map on the eircode site will yield the exact location of the address.

Surely that is the nub of the matter. In rural areas (which is more than 50%, there are no unique addresses. Surely giving every road a name and every building a number would be a prerequisite to this whole postcode business. Having a systematic method of doing this would make the postcode down to individual buildings unecessary (as the rest of the world already knows) and zonal codes would work, and not need costly and constant updating.

larchill · 04-06-2014 2:10pm

Yes indeed. The trouble is though, it would involve a big undertaking surveying every road, street, & lane to pick a name, signpost it, & then number every house :P Its easier, far quicker & cheaper to take the existing Geodirectory & assign a code using a computer. Most places even prior to postcodes would've been naming roads & streets etc. But not paddy who preferrs that psuedo virtual entity the townland!

Sam Russell · 04-06-2014 3:54pm

Assume we use a numeric postcode. The phone number system is used as a guide to asigning numbers geographically, e.g. Dublin =1xxxx Cork = 2xxxx , Galway 9xxxx, Limerick 6xxxx and so on.

Outside urban areas, townlands are assigned a postcode for the whole townland.

Then the tricky part. Finding names for all those bog roads.

larchill · 04-06-2014 4:13pm

Indeed, paddyitis would strike! Bog Rd, Bog Lane, Mountain View Road ... In NI roads are named after the townlands they pass through, eg: Ballysomewhere Rd.

Another approach for main roads between towns, eg Drogheda - Navan: coming from Drogheda its Navan Rd Drogheda with numbering, 1,2, 3, etc to a point ½ way to Navan. Coming the other way its Drogheda Rd, Navan to the ½ way point. The metric numbering system could be used: 1st house 100 mtrs: no 100 with even/odd on opposite sides.

As mentioned previously, this would call for a lot of surveying though.

Sam Russell · 04-06-2014 6:04pm

larchill wrote: »

Indeed, paddyitis would strike! Bog Rd, Bog Lane, Mountain View Road ... In NI roads are named after the townlands they pass through, eg: Ballysomewhere Rd.

Another approach for main roads between towns, eg Drogheda - Navan: coming from Drogheda its Navan Rd Drogheda with numbering, 1,2, 3, etc to a point ½ way to Navan. Coming the other way its Drogheda Rd, Navan to the ½ way point. The metric numbering system could be used: 1st house 100 mtrs: no 100 with even/odd on opposite sides.

As mentioned previously, this would call for a lot of surveying though.

This survey work could be done on Google maps, and could be done by unemployed or volunteers or even students. Remember, streetview is very good at this. Our favourite Revenue C?ommissioners are going to use it to check property tax returns.

Leonard Shelby · 05-06-2014 8:27am

Splinter wrote: »

It depends on the pricing system in place i guess, many courier companies have a set price based on the country of delivery, not the area within that country. It will give a better delivery date and estimated delivery time I'll agree.

However, if you look at it from a data point of view. At present,many countries would use postcode ranges, using the UK for example:
EC1A - EC9A would be one area. This means you don't physically store the data for every postcode combination and you can require the second half of the postcode but not validate it.

Without using this, you're going to need 2.2 million postcode entries for IE alone, the data storage for this is massive and doesn't make sense in a situation where it's not required 100%. I can see certain situations where it will be crucial, emergency services, etc. But local courier knowledge and situations where the address is already provided along with the postcode, won't need this

Splinter

2.2 million times 7 bytes is less than 15Mb. That ceased to be massive sometime around 1996. Most implementations won't need to store data locally, they will make a simple web service call over the Internet. Address information is much larger and is already stored on Irish Sat Navs.

Leonard Shelby · 05-06-2014 8:32am

Sam Russell wrote: »

Surely that is the nub of the matter. In rural areas (which is more than 50%, there are no unique addresses. Surely giving every road a name and every building a number would be a prerequisite to this whole postcode business. Having a systematic method of doing this would make the postcode down to individual buildings unecessary (as the rest of the world already knows) and zonal codes would work, and not need costly and constant updating.

Changing addresses is far more costly, error prone and unlikely to be adopted. The Eircode solution is the simple cheap solution that will actually work.

Sam Russell · 05-06-2014 9:45am

Leonard Shelby wrote: »

Changing addresses is far more costly, error prone and unlikely to be adopted. The Eircode solution is the simple cheap solution that will actually work.

You are not changing addresses but creating them. How could it be error prone, but it might be unpopular with the locals.

L1011 · 05-06-2014 10:42am

Look at how "well" it worked in Northern Ireland - not very - to see how popular it'd be

Also, with the one-off blight we have here, numbers would be non-sequential or have to be distance based and hence huge from day 1.

Carawaystick · 05-06-2014 11:10am

Impetus wrote: »

What is missing now?

(a) About 40%+ of buildings have no street/road name or house number. A phenomenon normally encountered in the third world.
(b) Roughly the same number of buildings are on a street/road with no name.

All roads have a unique 1-5 digit number.

Impetus wrote: »

(c) On some urban streets, while they may be numbered, the occupants of houses only use a “house name” (which is part of the needle in a haystack issue, especially on a long road).
(d) Existing urban street addresses are not part of a national postcode structure.

In France, the postcode only identifies a commune (town/village) and the written address takes over then. I bet they have a proper mapping of addresses in urban areas there though, and don't allow identical addresses, such as in Drogheda where there are 2 estates with the same name, one in Louth, and one in Meath.

larchill · 05-06-2014 2:12pm

Paddy always thinks he'll get away with it! France: pop 70m, Paddyland: 4.5m.

Impetus · 15-06-2014 6:52pm

larchill wrote: »

The whole trouble here is non unique addressing in rural areas: houses not numbered/roads not named. Using an general area code or range of postcodes will be of limited use! You'll still have to ask Micky Joe where Johnny thingy lives! This is the reason for eircodes which are unique to each address. In the eircode database, the geographical coordinates, northing-easting etc will be stored for each eircode. Entering the eircode into a satnav or internat based map on the eircode site will yield the exact location of the address.

You are assuming that GPS manufacturers will incorporate the (rather large) database of Irish Eircodes (close to 2 million codes that are randomly generated, and therefore one code could be very far distant from another) (on a tiny island with less than 5 million people). And even then, there is an assumption that most/all the GPS devices have the memory to support this*, and are updated to include the existing 2 million odd premises plus anything else that gets built. The randomisation proposed for the Eircode system makes this critical (eg daily or weekly updates). If we had a normal addressing system using street/road names and house numbers, a new house built at 500 Any Road would be 200m from 300 Any Road.

The most brain dead fake postcode non-system on the planet. Only small islands with inbreeding and the impact of same on the general intelligence level of the islanders could compete with the cluelessness of the people responsible for eircode.

Germany has about 82 million population, and is a well organized country. It moved from 4 to 5 digit postcodes after the amalgemation of East and West Germany - ie 82 million people with a lot less than 99,999 postocdes. France, Italy and Spain (not to mention the USA) also use 5 digit codes. Countries of similar size to Ireland - eg Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Austria have four digit postcodes.

The words mediocre, poor, shoddy, non-standard, bureaucratic, idiotic, non-user friendly, come to mind in the context of Eircode.....

*in a country where only the lowest quality versions of anything are freely on sale

Sam Russell · 15-06-2014 7:47pm

It would appear to me that a purely numeric code would be better. No rude words, and could be read by machine with greater ease (only 10 possible codes for each digit instead of 30 odd). It could be based loosely on the telephone numbering scheme. 1 is Dublin, 2 is Cork, 9 is Galway, 6 is Limerick etc. No snob value like D6Wxxxx, and easier to inform people. Could be intoduced in phases with say 5 digit codes first, expanding as required (like the phone system did).

Random postcodes has to be the most ridiculous suggestion on the planet.

fat to ripped · 15-06-2014 7:55pm

Can't wait until these are introduced. Don't know how we manage without them.

Impetus · 15-06-2014 8:18pm

fat to ripped wrote: »

Can't wait until these are introduced. Don't know how we manage without them.

Computerising chaos, back in the day was known to produce ultra-chaotic systems that were a total waste of money, and had to be dumped, writing off zillions as a result.

You may wish the day when there is a postcode or whatever.... but the current eircode, based on the Iranian system, but with an alpha numeric twist, and a randomisation element to really screw things up, are proposals of optimised stupidity and bad design and are a national embarrasment.

Those responsible may well wish to consider their position...... They obviously never lived in a well managed country, where they could experience the benefits of a real postcode system, and cluelessly resorted to re-inventing the wheel. One wonders why the news media are so silent on this huge waste of public money that will deliver no real benefit to the citizen????

Leonard Shelby · 15-06-2014 9:22pm

Impetus wrote: »

You are assuming that GPS manufacturers will incorporate the (rather large) database of Irish Eircodes (close to 2 million codes that are randomly generated, and therefore one code could be very far distant from another) (on a tiny island with less than 5 million people). And even then, there is an assumption that most/all the GPS devices have the memory to support this*, and are updated to include the existing 2 million odd premises plus anything else that gets built. The randomisation proposed for the Eircode system makes this critical (eg daily or weekly updates). If we had a normal addressing system using street/road names and house numbers, a new house built at 500 Any Road would be 200m from 300 Any Road.

The most brain dead fake postcode non-system on the planet. Only small islands with inbreeding and the impact of same on the general intelligence level of the islanders could compete with the cluelessness of the people responsible for eircode.

Germany has about 82 million population, and is a well organized country. It moved from 4 to 5 digit postcodes after the amalgemation of East and West Germany - ie 82 million people with a lot less than 99,999 postocdes. France, Italy and Spain (not to mention the USA) also use 5 digit codes. Countries of similar size to Ireland - eg Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Austria have four digit postcodes.

The words mediocre, poor, shoddy, non-standard, bureaucratic, idiotic, non-user friendly, come to mind in the context of Eircode.....

*in a country where only the lowest quality versions of anything are freely on sale

Calm down Impetus, you'll do yourself an injury. We all know your solution is to "simply" change everyones address which of course everyone will use immediately without question. Sometimes when no one listens to your ideas it isn't because there is a global conspiracy, its because you simply don't know what you're talking about.

No need to worry, all sat navs will incorporate eircodes, its no more difficult a job than incorporating the UK ones.

No one from any industry body with an interest in using postcodes has criticised the proposed format. Why? Are the Iranians threatening them and they are afraid to break their silence?

Go have a beer and enjoy the World Cup, it's a better use of your time than getting all worked up about things you know nothing about.

15-06-2014 9:40pm

I think that the real issue is how random are the last four characters, are they really random at all, if so then they would cause a logistics database nightmare.
You could end up with two adjacent codes being at opposite ends of the area covered by the prefix.

If on the other hand it is a variation of the UK postcode then each character will provide an ever increasing level of accuracy when pinpointing the location of the property. Such a code would at least allow some sort of presorting before going for high precision.

Splinter · 14-07-2014 1:32pm

Has anyone heard any more on this? The latest i know of is that the "Database" of postcodes won't see light before May 2015 meaning even though homes may get postcodes, they can't really be used for anything before May (GPS, routing, postal etc)

Also, dolanbaker, the second half of the postcode (unique) will not be sequential in the area so going through a postcode step by step will in most cases not work, it'll be a 7 character location or nothing.

FWIW, the first half of the code itself will be based off your local sorting office. If you have 24 sorting offices in dublin then it'll be D01 - D24. If one in Offaly then it'd be something like OF1 etc (just making numbers up but you get the gist)

Edit:

The eircode site now says postcodes will be available from Early Spring 2015 and not January 1st which lines up with what I mentioned

Impetus · 14-07-2014 2:59pm

Splinter wrote: »

Has anyone heard any more on this? The latest i know of is that the "Database" of postcodes won't see light before May 2015 meaning even though homes may get postcodes, they can't really be used for anything before May (GPS, routing, postal etc)

Also, dolanbaker, the second half of the postcode (unique) will not be sequential in the area so going through a postcode step by step will in most cases not work, it'll be a 7 character location or nothing.

FWIW, the first half of the code itself will be based off your local sorting office. If you have 24 sorting offices in dublin then it'll be D01 - D24. If one in Offaly then it'd be something like OF1 etc (just making numbers up but you get the gist)

Edit:

The eircode site now says postcodes will be available from Early Spring 2015 and not January 1st which lines up with what I mentioned

It is typical of the dogmatic way that the so called “public service” works, especially in English speaking countries. They do not see their role as being there to provide a service to the public.

The incompetents behind this “Eircode” have come up with the most user un-friendly, randomised code that is completely incompatible with the code systems used in continental Europe. There is no geo-spatial code relationship (as we have with telephone NDCs - eg codes in the 5 space are in the SE, 6 in mid west, etc). The randomisation of the last four characters makes it impossible to derive approximate proximity between codes. It does not appear to make any provision for geographic codes and codes applying to business/po box users.

The “system” will be expensive to devise and maintain. It would be cheaper to give rural houses etc a street address and house number - and properly applied this would require very little maintenance. All one would need with a street address model is a simple code to point to the postal zone.

They are unlikely to work with GPS systems - most GPS devices seem to come with tiny memories with little room for map expansion - not to mind a high resolution code where no approximation is possible (ie not more accurate than a Dublin 1 type spatial guess). It will take about 62 MB of space to store each 7 character postcode, the related 12 digit ITM grid reference, say an 8 digit “road” reference (which will include townlands), and say 4 digits for a building number. Ireland has less than 1% of the EU population or 0.62% of the European population. So if every country in Europe took the same selfish, non-standard, police state, “two fingers” to the population route to postcodes, a GPS would require 10GB just to store the postcodes and grid references and pointers to roads. Add to that about 7 GB for maps, etc. Add to that the download time to update the GPS map and code database. And the cost to GPS manufacturers of serving petabytes of data to its user base.

Added to that Eircode is keeping everybody in the dark with a two page website that is minimal in the extreme.

Tow · 14-07-2014 3:35pm

It has the looks of a contract which went to the highest bidder, who in turn wants to maximise their investment. They are going to have a number of subscription levels for the database, depending how often, what format and the level of detail you require. What really strikes me is that there is no modulus check built into the postcodes. So apart from a few basic character set rules the only way to validate a post code is by subscribing to the database. Apart from problems with the size of the database, I don't see the satnav companies shelling out to build in the data into their devices at no extra cost.

Sam Russell · 14-07-2014 3:54pm

A new minister and perhaps a new look at this fine mess that this has become. He should set up a departmental committee to revue the whole process and then look for public consultations so that a new design can be considered.

larchill · 15-07-2014 1:40pm

Sam Russell wrote: »

A new minister and perhaps a new look at this fine mess that this has become. He should set up a departmental committee to revue the whole process and then look for public consultations so that a new design can be considered.

Aw no not all over again: Noel Dempsey => Eammon Ryan => Pat Rabbite => the present just appointed incumbent! :eek:

National Postcodes to be introduced

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