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From the Mapcode System Reference Document:

http://www.mapcode.com/downloads.html

'Unfortunately, a large part of the world population has no address. In India alone, well over half a billion people live in houses that have no street name. Millions of man-hours are lost every day trying to locate or deliver goods to people and businesses based on business cards like this:

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Amri Patel, consultant New Sun Technologies, District 14, Pune Tel. +23984982217

Three miles east along the airport road, take second left past the golden statue, in the fourth street left ask final directions at baker across from white house.

Figure 1. Typical Indian Business Card

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As we all know, even having an address is only an initial step in locating a position. Knowing someone lives on Queens’ Road 123 in Brunnock still requires you to find out where Brunnock is, and where the Queen’s Road is, and where number 123 is.

The mapcode system was designed as a free, brand-less, international standard that allows any location on the surface of the Earth to be represented by a short, easy to recognize and remember “code”, usually consisting of between 4 and 7 letters and digits.'

So, your point number 2 seems closest to what they're aiming for. Indeed, later in the document, they state:

'The longer a code gets, the more awkward it becomes to use, the more difficult to remember, the more easy to make mistakes in copying or using, the less benefit it offers over more elaborate descriptions. Many other benefits depend on mapcodes being short. If length was not a problem, we might as well put our longitude and latitude on business cards and address labels.'

> Also, won't there be multiple mapcodes for a single spot and won't that require cross-association of the respective metadata?

It seems like this corresponds to a coordinate system. You say what country you're in and then this gives you an aim point. I don't think you need to say 'it's in This, which is in This which...' :/



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