There is no global standard for postal addresses and researchers from SA's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), as well as the University of Pretoria and organisations in Denmark, the US and the UK are gathered in Copenhagen to pay the matter attention.
Addresses encompass much more than just postal delivery: they are needed for opening bank accounts, obtaining identity documents, voting, obtaining employment, delivering goods and services and simply visiting friends.
CSIR researcher Antony Cooper told the 10th International Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Conference, in Trinidad, in February, that the time is right for bringing together a number of past and current international initiatives to develop a common international address standard.
Cooper holds that a global address standard will promote interoperability and re-usability of address-related software tools by providing one common framework for developers.
The standard will facilitate the development of spatial data infrastructures, particularly those that span national borders, and facilitate data discovery through geospatial portals.
He also believes that an international address standard will also help developing countries currently without widespread addressing systems to speed up the process of assigning addresses and maintaining address databases.
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