South African address standard and initiatives towards an international address standard

Abstract

Various countries and international organizations have address standards or are developing them. An address is needed for many more applications than just postal delivery, such as: goods delivery; connecting utilities; opening bank accounts; voting; visiting friends; and providing a reference context for presenting other information. The benefits of an international address standards include: enabling address interoperability across boundaries; reducing service delivery costs; enabling development of addressing tools (including open source); and assisting countries with inadequate addressing systems to implement and maintain them. The idea is not to develop one address structure imposed on everyone, but rather a framework and vocabulary for describing address data around the world, to enable interoperability. The South African address standard, SANS 1883, does not aim at devising a new system of addressing or building a national address database, but rather at enabling interoperability in address data. The standard defines twelve address types currently used in South Africa, both official and unofficial. A paper exploring the possibilities of an international address standard was presented at the GSDI-10 conference in Trinidad in February 2008. An ISO Workshop on address standards was held in Copenhagen in May 2008, attached to the meetings of ISO/TC 211, Geographic information/ Geomatics. This paper reports on these activities and others, considering issues such as: Is an international address standard feasible? Should it be descriptive, prescriptive, or both? What mechanism should be used for developing it? What should it include (e.g: vocabular, ontology; geo-referencing and a reference model)?