<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/navajo-nation-homes-accurate-addresses/>
"Adaline Sneak lives at the end of a long, unmarked dirt road in a rural area
of the Navajo Nation in Utah. Getting there requires a high clearance vehicle
and at least moderate navigation skills.
Residents here don’t have typical addresses with street names and house
numbers. Until recently, Sneak’s official address was even vaguer than the
directions a gas station clerk might give a lost driver — seven miles south of
Montezuma Creek, Utah, County Road 410.
She can’t get mail with an address like that, nor could someone search
directions to her house on Google Maps, for example.
But for someone like Sneak, an address like this is more than just
inconvenient. It’s life-threatening. Sneak suffers from seizures, and about a
year ago, an ambulance got lost on the way to her house because of her
ambiguous address.
“We almost lost her that day,” said Arlene Begay, Sneak’s mother. The ambulance
eventually made it to Sneak’s house, but only because someone on the emergency
response team happened to know Begay’s sister, whom they called for directions
to Sneak’s house.
“That’s happened a few times actually,” Begay continued, recalling other times
the ambulance had gotten lost. But now, any confusion over Sneak’s address is
hopefully cleared up for good.
This fall, Sneak was one of over 3,000 residents on the Navajo Nation who
received a new, more accurate address through an initiative led by a nonprofit
called the Rural Utah Project. The new addresses, which were developed by
Google, are called Plus Codes. The codes are simple alpha-numeric coordinates
based on longitude and latitude.
All locations on Earth have unique, Google-generated Plus Codes, the same way
every location on Earth has global coordinates, though the Plus Codes are much
shorter than global coordinates, making them easier to share and remember."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
