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PON codes/Postcodes

CJhaughey

There was an interesting article in todays Sunday Business Post about a Company in Cork that has developed a PON coding system that uses grid references to produce a workable system that allows you to generate your own navigation point.
The advantages over a government issued postcode is that you can generate a code for anywhere, crash sites, rural addresses, etc etc.
I wonder will this be widely adopted now?
There is a Beta page that has a lot of info on them and how they could be used.
According to the site, Garmin are using the info in their new satnav systems.
With the impending dereg of An Post in 2010 this could make it viable for new courier companies to setup and pickup from addresses that traditionally were hard to find (expensive time lost).
www.irishpostcodes.ie is the site if you are interested.
I have no affiliation with the company BTW , I just find it very interesting.

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KevR

I hope we do get postcodes. Our post sometimes gets mixed up with post for another street (of the same name) in a different estate not too far away. Having postcodes would no doubt stop these mix ups.

CJhaughey

This system seems to be more than just a postcode. They can be generated for any location, country city etc.

ForiegnNational

I got so annoyed about delivery companies consistently failing to find my home down in West Cork, I put together a quick website http://www.epostcode.ie/ which is freely available and is based on the standard International Amatuer Radio Association (IARU) geographical location finder system (check out Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System).

All I have done to convert the 10 digit number down to a unsable 7 digits is to encode the leading four characters down to a single one, then leave the remaining 6 for accuracy. The resulting postcode is geographically accurate to within 30' of your house (try it out for yourself - it's free).

At present it is in a very rough beta form, I dumped it on the web before going on holiday and am only just back, so any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Kind regards

Pete

CJhaughey

Thats quite impressive Pete, the only thing that I would have as a query is how does a delivery driver with no working knowledge of the Maidenhead system find your place?
The one thing that impressed me about the PON codes was that they have been supported by Garmin which is a big step up for recognition.

The MLS is actually very similar to the PON codes in the way it locates the area, but instead of using a Lat Long it uses a predefined systems of squares within squares to produce the position.
There will have to be some kind of system adopted eventually either with the Govt or without and the acceptance of a major GPS receiver manufacturer of the PON system may just be a turning point.

I share your frustration of trying to direct delivery drivers to my house!
Yes, can you see the castle? Good, now cross the bridge and don't take the immediate left, go 100m then turn left down the lane, Garda Station? You have gone too far..... "

fricatus

CJhaughey wrote: »

According to the site, Garmin are using the info in their new satnav systems.

This is a pathetic indictment of the government's inaction. Fair play to the guys setting this up if they've got Garmin on board, but it points up how slow and useless the government has been in responding to the need for some sort of postal or location code.

What we've got to remember is that a postcode is not just a means to facilitate delivery of mail, but a spatial identifier that allows for cross-referencing of all sorts of statistics, the delivery of social services and so on.

Now we've got a situation where a bunch of entrepreneurs have designed a code that's great for Sat Nav use, but probably highly unsuitable for any sort of spatial planning (or any other use you care to mention).

I may be wrong, but my point is that it's not good enough that a de facto postcode can impose itself on the country because of government inaction.

ForiegnNational

CJhaughey wrote: »

how does a delivery driver with no working knowledge of the Maidenhead system find your place?

The system converts back to a lat/long, which you can put into any GPS system (e.g. in Garmin, under "Where To..." -> Coordinates).

I agree that having it directly in your GPS is great, but I'm just an annoyed punter rather than a company trying to make a living out of it!

As I said, it's just a beta at present. I have posted it to get comments back just like this. Once I have something useful, I will then then speak to people such as Garmin, etc about using the system.

SalthillGuy

Navteq are taking the ponc codes now to pinpoint POI for next release of maps in Sept. They are accurate to 20 feet. I think it is a great idea. The example of the doctor lost in a rural area is as good as you get. If every house knew their ponc code then deliveries would be a lot more efficient.

CJhaughey

fricatus wrote: »

This is a pathetic indictment of the government's inaction. Fair play to the guys setting this up if they've got Garmin on board, but it points up how slow and useless the government has been in responding to the need for some sort of postal or location code.

Agreed but it also must be said and I think that it has been in previous threads about postcodes that An Post has been vigorous in it's efforts to make it difficult/expensive for others to use their system.
BTW I am not sure how their system is able to handle generating a grid reference for a point that could be transitory in its nature (aircrash site etc)
But ultimately the Govt has been shown in this instance as in many others that it simply lacks the necessary will or knowledge to make this a priority.

Carawaystick

It's funny how the delivery companies that charge much more than An Post still provide a poorer service and want a govt handout er system to help them work. An Post are right to keep their knowledge built up over the years to themselves, why should that IP be given away to the private sector?

KevR, the planning authority should not have allowed this kind of a mixup - assuming both roads weren't named before the 70's.

France only has 5 digit postcodes and the first 2 are the county number. An entire town has the same postcode - so the street name and number is what they use there.

101sean

A system is sorely needed here and soon. I think every courier driver in Tipp has my mobile number now as it's the only way they can find me. My father's mail frequently goes to a near neighbour with the same name, is opened and sent over days later. If you try and add the family nickname, many official sites can't handle it, admittedly some postcode systems may not solve that problem though.

The UK postcode system isn't accurate in rural areas as it may cover a wide area, put it in a sat nav and it sends you to the centre. Urban is usually OK as it narrows it down to about 10 houses and side of road, large users can have their own. It works for spatial planning alright though, the term 'postcode lottery' is in common use for describing whether you're going to get decent health care or not!

CJhaughey

In who's interest is it that An Post keeps a monopoly on their postcode system? We the taxpayers paid for it!
The postcode system in the UK seems to be a free system that anyone can use, private companies etc. So why not here?

I think that at this point the challenge is that the need for a workable system that is able to be generated by anyone is so immediate and necessary to a properly functioning society that if the govt does not act immediately the alternative systems that have been proposed by the private sector will start to take hold and bypass the whole process

They have sat on their hands long enough and had ample time to develop a good modern system that they have only themselves to blame.

Consultants reports have been made and are sitting on dusty harddrives in Govt. departments and yet in 2009 only a year away from dereg. of the postal sector and we still have nothing!
This is a very late stage to be thinking about spatial mapping, how long would it take to map the whole of Ireland and who will pay for it?

The best thing about not having a system is that we finally have a chance to pick the best parts of all the systems in use worldwide and enact them.
No need to reinvent the wheel, just choose which parts we need and work best for Ireland.

Carawaystick

CJhaughey wrote: »

In who's interest is it that An Post keeps a monopoly on their postcode system? We the taxpayers paid for it!

Why allow private sector to use that publicly funded knowledge for free?

What private sector firm provides universal service like An Post?

if private sector companies are promising a delivery service to anywhere in Ireland but can't figure out where these places are and people are still willing to pay for this poor service, then I don't know what's worse, suckers not demanding a refund from the courier co.'s or the clueless courier co.'s themselves.

101sean

Courier charges to Ireland from UK are higher because of the delivery problem. I tried to get a gearbox sent from Scotland and they refused to send it here because of past problems with delivery, I ended up waiting until I was in the UK to pick it up.

In rural areas how can any courier driver find individuals unless there a phone number. A decent sat nav will find a townland but that's about it. Most rural postmen know everyone on their round personnally, only way it works without road names or house names and numbers.

trad

There's a system owned by the ESB called MPRN (Meter Point Reference Number) and every property that has an electricity supply has one. The number is on the top right hand side of your ESB bill and consists of 11 digits usually 100********.

I use this system as a BER Assessor. When I input the MPRN number the address comes up. Why doesn't the some one develope a system in tandem with the ESB. The database is there, the unique reference to the property is there, it needs to be linked up with a geofile that maps the property from the MPRN number. Who knows the ESB may even have it done so that they can find every property. Come to think of it how does the meter reader find us all?

CJhaughey

Carawaystick wrote: »

Why allow private sector to use that publicly funded knowledge for free?

Why not? The rest of the world allows the use of postcodes by anyone.

Carawaystick wrote: »

What private sector firm provides universal service like An Post?

How can they if they don't get access to Postcoding info?

Carawaystick wrote: »

if private sector companies are promising a delivery service to anywhere in Ireland but can't figure out where these places are and people are still willing to pay for this poor service, then I don't know what's worse, suckers not demanding a refund from the courier co.'s or the clueless courier co.'s themselves.

An Post are not exactly covered in glory
Should suckers consumers pay An post for this kind of service?
Hard to ask for a refund from An Post I think, and they have a monopoly and have been protected for the last few decades.
The mere fact that people are willing to pay courier companies to deliver parcels instead of AP is indicative that they either don't trust AP or AP don't give the service.
How many times has your postman delivered a gearbox?
An post canned SDS a few years back.
The courier companies are only clueless because they haven't got access to the postcoding system that AP has developed at our expense.
They might very well operate a better service if they were allowed a level playing field and that day could well be fast approaching.

Carlow52

ForiegnNational wrote: »

I got so annoyed about delivery companies consistently failing to find my home down in West Cork, I put together a quick website http://www.epostcode.ie/ which is freely available and is based on the standard International Amatuer Radio Association (IARU) geographical location finder system (check out Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System).

All I have done to convert the 10 digit number down to a unsable 7 digits is to encode the leading four characters down to a single one, then leave the remaining 6 for accuracy. The resulting postcode is geographically accurate to within 30' of your house (try it out for yourself - it's free).

At present it is in a very rough beta form, I dumped it on the web before going on holiday and am only just back, so any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Kind regards

Pete

You have done the country some service with this. Thank you

Delphic

Here's another one that's worth looking at - Go Codes - www.ticode.ie.

It's handy cos it's got a look-up database of addresses for its location codes.
You can map Go Codes and you can put them onto your satnav.

They're coming out on mobile phones as well - I've got a trial version on my mobile at the moment - works really well.

[Deleted User]

It seems to me that An Post are letting others develop their own post code systems to create confusion amongst consumers.

If courier companies don't agree to all adopt a particular system, consumers who want to assist deliveries by using a post code would need to know which code to use use for the particular courier who's doing the delivery.

There's three different systems mentioned in this thread alone.

serfboard

Deleted User wrote: »

If courier companies don't agree to all adopt a particular system, consumers who want to assist deliveries by using a post code would need to know which code to use use for the particular courier who's doing the delivery.

You'd imagine that they would try and sit down together and agree on a system. Companies do it in other industries, so why not?

This would then become the de facto standard, since it doesn't look like the government are going to get around to it anytime soon.

Delphic

serfboard wrote: »

You'd imagine that they would try and sit down together and agree on a system. .

Who's 'they'? The delivery companies? Or the code companies?

cantalach

ForiegnNational wrote: »

I got so annoyed about delivery companies consistently failing to find my home down in West Cork, I put together a quick website http://www.epostcode.ie/ which is freely available and is based on the standard International Amatuer Radio Association (IARU) geographical location finder system (check out Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System).

All I have done to convert the 10 digit number down to a unsable 7 digits is to encode the leading four characters down to a single one, then leave the remaining 6 for accuracy. The resulting postcode is geographically accurate to within 30' of your house (try it out for yourself - it's free).

At present it is in a very rough beta form, I dumped it on the web before going on holiday and am only just back, so any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Kind regards

Pete

Clever system in many ways. Being strictly based on long/lat means it would surely be immune from any Dublin 24 vs Dublin 6W challenges - you can't argue with your long/lat after all! Another really cool thing about it is that by not permitting numerals and letters in the same position it avoids the "is that a 1 or an I" confusion that would otherwise occur in hand-written addresses (0 and O too).

There are potential issues however with the fact that it only attaches significance to the "where it is" and not the "how to get there". With this system it is possible for two properties to share the same post code even though they are separated by a physical barrier. I've just been clicking around now in my local area and I can find pairs of houses that share the same code despite being on completely different streets with a few minutes drive between them. In an extreme case you could have a pair of houses sharing a code despite being on opposite sides of a stream or railway line with the nearest crossing point several km in either direction.

[Deleted User]

cantalach wrote: »

In an extreme case you could have a pair of houses sharing a code despite being on opposite sides of a stream or railway line with the nearest crossing point several km in either direction.

One very important reason who any post code system must be overlaid on to the topology of the area.

Most post code systems are based on physical points on a map and sub-divided by physical boundaries, i.e. rivers, roads etc

L1011

Carawaystick wrote: »

Why allow private sector to use that publicly funded knowledge for free?

Because it reduces the cost of doing business here.

Carawaystick wrote: »

What private sector firm provides universal service like An Post?

DHL, UPS, Fastway from experience have all successfully delivered to out of the way locations for work.

Carawaystick wrote: »

if private sector companies are promising a delivery service to anywhere in Ireland but can't figure out where these places are and people are still willing to pay for this poor service, then I don't know what's worse, suckers not demanding a refund from the courier co.'s or the clueless courier co.'s themselves.

Whats worst is that a government body has developed a post coding system and refuses to let the public use it....

emanresu

CJhaughey wrote: »

In who's interest is it that An Post keeps a monopoly on their postcode system? We the taxpayers paid for it!

CJhaughey wrote: »

How can they if they don't get access to Postcoding info?

The courier companies are only clueless because they haven't got access to the postcoding system that AP has developed at our expense.
They might very well operate a better service if they were allowed a level playing field and that day could well be fast approaching.

MYOB wrote: »

Whats worst is that a government body has developed a post coding system and refuses to let the public use it....

Does An Post actually have a postcode system?

What are the above quotes referring to?

I think their only system is local knowledge. They have staff based in the local areas who are familiar with the roads, townlands and families. It works fine for An Post, but not for courier companies whose staff don't have local knowledge.

L1011

An Post has an internal postcode system, you can see the encoding marks from the OCR readers printed across the back of envelopes at times.

emanresu

MYOB wrote: »

An Post has an internal postcode system, you can see the encoding marks from the OCR readers printed across the back of envelopes at times.

But that's only useful for transferring mail between various sorting offices,
Athlone, Cork, Portlaoise Mail Centres etc.
Any courier company would have their own depots in different parts of the country.
The local postman doesn't use those encoding marks to deliver the mail.

antoinolachtnai

Firstly, anybody can licence the geodirectory information. It's not cheap, but it can be done.

There are real issues though, about the accuracy and relevance of geodirectory. A good proportion of the addresses in geodirectory are simply wrong. A lot of the residential addresses (40 percent, I believe) are non-unique (i.e., two or more houses have exactly the same address), which greatly reduces their value, to put it mildly.

A system of arbitrary squares like PON or ticode has a lot of issues as cantalach has pointed out.

It is also tricky to hand-sort by a GIS-based code. It is possible, but it is difficult. In practice, hand-sorting may become more important as time goes on, not less important, because the Internet will result in a smaller amount of larger mail packets.

With a GIS type code, it is also difficult to 'rate' items, i.e. for the delivery cost of an item to be determined by a postal authority or courier company in a far off country. Special algorithms are required, rather than a simple lookup table.

GIS type codes tend to be alphanumeric. There is good empirical evidence that alphanumeric codes are more likely to be misread, misremembered and miswritten.

In terms of use of geodirectory and the automatic sortation system by An Post for sorting mail - in principle, the sortation system is supposed to sort mail into sorted piles for individual postmen to go on their walks with. The mail is supposed to be all pre-sorted, once in the national sorting centres, i.e, no sorting is supposed to happen in the delivery offices and mail does not go from sorting centre to sorting centre. I do not know how well this works in practice.

Of course, this system only works for flat mail. The flat mail business is clearly heading into serious decline.

To really sort the whole thing out, any postcode system has to take into account the more general requirement for address reform rather than simply coming up with a code. PON has no relationship with existing addressing practices. It is simply an overlay, and even though it is very specific, is not and cannot be a substitute for the address. TIcode is linked to the geodirectory address.

It really makes sense to use existing traditional and administrative divisions, i.e., province, county, electoral division. These divisions have been the basis for administration for hundreds of years. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with them. (They are also embedded into geodirectory, which makes it relatively simple to take advantage of the new postcode in the sortation system.)

goudystout

antoinolachtnai

thanks for the benefit of academic research from 1990's. Above all else, basing something on ED's is out-dated - atomic small areas are replacing ED's. They were developed in NUIM ( However, ASA's or ED's are not something that everyday folk will be using!)

This thread is about Geo Postcodes - i.e. a Naughties requirement for vehicles to find locations not about 90's academic research into statistical reporting areas, hand sorting mail and changing the form of Irish addresses.
Nobody wants to replace townlands and placenames, in Irish or English forms, with some statistical area based reference - as far as I can see this thread is about adding a geocode to an existing and traditional Irish address (which everyone wants to preserve) so that a vehicle or pedestrian can find it?

Perhaps there is another thread where you can discuss replacing traditional Irish addresses with ED or ASA references to suit academic purposes.

Then all we have to do is decide which GeoCode is suitable for adding to existing addresses to suit the logistics requirement - one that is predictable, unambiguous, easily identified (always the same format) and capable of giving both properties and non property features a short, unique and easily remembered code which cannot be confused with anything else I suppose! In my opinion only one of the ones mentioned here seems to go near satisfying all those requirements but that's for others to judge!

L1011

emanresu wrote: »

But that's only useful for transferring mail between various sorting offices,
Athlone, Cork, Portlaoise Mail Centres etc.
Any courier company would have their own depots in different parts of the country.
The local postman doesn't use those encoding marks to deliver the mail.

Its also used to determine which bag the post goes in to in the sorting office - while the postie isn't using it, its being used right down to the very final stage of delivery. I'd doubt posties in the UK make particular use of postcodes to determine which house of of the block they cover to go to; the entire point of such a system is it lets you know where that area *is*.

Due to having no public system I've had some interesting problems with stuff for work ending up on the wrong van from a courier three days in a row due to them assuming somewhere with an An Post decreed postal address of "Letterkenny" would actually be in Letterkenny. Except all the extremely rural and island post office delivery areas in Donegal are post-town'ed through Letterkenny.... this problem gets repeated in every rural area.

Carawaystick

MYOB wrote: »

Due to having no public system I've had some interesting problems with stuff for work ending up on the wrong van from a courier three days in a row due to them assuming somewhere with an An Post decreed postal address of "Letterkenny" would actually be in Letterkenny. Except all the extremely rural and island post office delivery areas in Donegal are post-town'ed through Letterkenny.... this problem gets repeated in every rural area.

See, this is an issue with the courier company not knowing what they're at.

I'd imagine it'd be reasonably obvious whether or not an address was rural or not from the address, and then it'd be a matter of getting to the location and then figuring out where the location is.
If the company couldn't do this in three days, well I don't think they should stay in business.