En découvrant openlocationcode on pourrait se demander « pourquoi un nouveau système ? », voici les raisons avancées sur leur site :
- The codes aren’t case sensitive and don’t include easily confused characters. We’ve selected the characters to make it difficult to impossible to spell words in any language.
– Codes are generated from latitude and longitude, so they already exist for everywhere. Nobody has to set them up or pay for them. Each place has only one code.
– Codes that are similar are located closer together than codes that are different.
– Open Location Codes represent an area, not a point.
– The size of the area depends on the length of the code. Long codes are more accurate than short codes.
– Dropping characters from the end of a code gives you a larger area that contained the original code.
– Codes are 10 or 11 characters long (8FMGP9FW+6M), but if you’re in the local area (within 50km), the leading four characters of the code can be omitted (P9FW+6M) making the codes even shorter.
– The short code can be used together with a place name (like P9FW+6M Pisa, Italy).