The H
General discussion about the site and its contents
Posting 
Streamline Postal And Courier Services With Global Postal Codes 11 November 2011 22:59
November 15, 2011, Toronto, Canada, NAC Geographic Products Inc.
announced the release of NAC Sorter - a software module for mail
sorting systems to sort all mail automatically from world level to
final household mail boxes, thanks to the power of the Universal
Address (also called the Global Postal Code).
Though it has been a long time effort of the Universal Postal Union
(UPU) to standardize mailing addresses for international mail, it has
little success as traditional addresses evolved from history have
deep roots in languages and cultures and are difficult to be
translated into standard addresses in the UPU suggested formats, not
to mention that 60% of the world population do not have addresses
yet.These lead to limited automation in mail sorting and no postal
and courier services to many households.
This situation now can be changed with the introduction of the
Universal Address that can be used to globalize all addresses. The
Universal Address is a highly efficient and human-friendly code
mathematically equivalent to longitude/latitude coordinates and
available at every location in the world, including locations of all
houses, buildings and even temporary camps, and can be instantly
obtained with a GPS device such as a smartphone or an online high
resolution satellite image map such as NAC Locator. Here are some
examples of the Universal Addresses:
NAC: JZ9G P9TP (Acropolis, Greece)
NAC: H5SX R497 (Arch of Triumph, Paris, France)
NAC: 9F3J L1PL (Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico)
NAC: GZM7 RKH3 (Buckingham Palace, UK)
NAC: 57WF NSBR (CACTUS Site, USA)
NAC: 8CHZ Q86C (CN Tower, Toronto, Canada)
NAC: J16W PZFH (Colosseum, Rome, Italy)
NAC: H5Q2 R48Q (Eiffel Tower, Paris, France)
NAC: SNZ PMK (Forbidden City, Beijing, China)
NAC: J3 RQ (Berlin, Germany)
Here NAC stands for Natural Area Code, a four character NAC
represents a 30x24 square kilometer area like a city, a six character
NAC represents roughly a square kilometer like a street block, an
eight character one a 35x25 square meter area like a house and a ten
character one is one square meter like a door anywhere on the earth.
Since an eight or ten character NAC is able to uniquely specify a
house or building anywhere in the world, it is also called a
Universal Address.
Sorting mail based on the Universal Address is just a simple
mathematical problem: finding the area containing the location of the
Universal Address from a series of areas defined by the company
according to its own transportation and delivery structure, which is
independent from languages, cultures and the definition of the postal
zones.
For countries with traditional addresses, the suggested globalized
address is the traditional address embedded with the Universal
Address.
Thus, it avoids the difficult translation of the address so that
people used to the tranditional address can still use it as usual,
while machines, tourists and people unfamiliar with the language and
the traditional address can use the language-independent digital
Universal Address as it has a distinct format and can be easily
recognized no matter where it is embedded in the address block.
For countries without traditional addresses, the globalized address
can be the Universal Address only or the place names plus the
Universal Address.
Then, all homes in the world have their own globalized addresses.
With the globalized addresses on mail and parcels,
1. all houdeholds, cottages and even temporary camps in the world can
get postal and courier services delivered to their doors no matter
whether they have traditional addresses or not as they can be
uniquely specified by Universal Addresses.
2. all international mail and parcels can be automatically sorted as
the Universal Addresses are worldwide valid.
3. all courier companies can sort and transport parcels according to
their own needs without concerns in changes of postal codes due to
the changes of postal services, thanks to the independency of the
Universal Addresses from postal services.
4. mail and parcels in all countries, especially those without postal
code systems or without address systems can be sorted automatically,
thanks to the pure mathematic sorting algorithm of the Universal
Addresses independent from languages and cultures.
5. postal and courier companies can extend the automation in mail
sorting all the way to final mail boxes of individual houses, thanks
to the unique Universal Addresses available to all households in the
world.
"The release of NAC Sorter represents another milestone in the
digital and globalization revolution, " said Dr. Xinhang Shen,
president of NAC Geographic Products Inc., "Postal and courier
companies now can automatically sort all mail and parcels at all
levels with the same algorithm based on the same kind of codes no
matter where they are and no matter where the mail and parcels are
sent to, eliminating barriers from hundreds of different languages,
traditions, postal code systems of the addresses."
Actually, Universal Addresses can be used for all location related
applications (postal and couriers services, taxi services, emergency
services, maps, navigation, local search, travel guides, geographic
information systems, cadastre, land planning, management of roadside
objects, etc) with significantly improved efficiency,
interoperability and reliability. For example, if you use the
Universal Address instead of the traditional address to specify the
destination on a navigation system, you can save 80% of key input,
avoid difficulty in inputting foreign characters if it is a foreign
address, eliminate errors from the outdated, duplicated or missing
address and extend the navigation to locations without traditional
addresses.
Currently, NAC Sorter is delivered as an ActiveX control for
Microsoft Windows based mail sorting software and has been released
to two major manufacturers for the integration with their mail
sorting systems. We also welcome other manufacturers of mail sorting
systems to do the integration to speed up the revolution of the
postal and courier services in the world. The software module can be
downloaded here. For more information about NAC Sorter, please check
http://www.nacgeo.com/nacsorter.asp.
About NAC Geographic Products Inc.
Incorporated in 1995 in Toronto, Canada, NAC Geographic Products Inc.
is a world's leading company in geographic technologies and
geo-services, developing GIS/GPS software products and providing APIs
for real-time geo-services (geocoding addresses, reverse-geocoding,
mapping, routing, etc.) for web applications and wireless location
based services, etc.
CONTACT
Lixin Zhou
PR Manager
Tel: +1 416 496 6110
Email: lzhou@nacgeo.com
Web: www.nacgeo.com
Keywords
Mail Sorting, Postal Code, Postcode, Global Postal Code, Universal
Address, Natural Area Code, NAC, NAC Locator, Google Maps, Satellite
Image Maps, Local Search, Navigation, Search Engine, Mapping, Street
Address, Geocode, Geocoding, LBS, GPS, Location Based Service,
Locating, Tracking, Searching, Wireless, Cellphone, Map Grid,
Geography, Geographic Technology, Geographic Coordinates, Longitude,
Latitude, Property Identifier, Emergency Service, 911
- Threaded View
- Flat View