Click to go to the beginning of FAQ.
What are the advantages of the NAC map grid system?
The Natural Area Coding System is also a very useful map grid system with the advantages listed in the following that existing map grid systems do not possess:
- Maps with NAC grid system have all information represented
consistently, which helps people to relate and connect the information
obtained from different maps of different scales and different areas.
- Maps with the NAC grid system can be used to pinpoint addresses, streets,
highways, tourist interesting sites and services, counties, towns,
cities and countries directly.
- Maps with NAC grid system can be used to find out the Natural
Area Code for all addresses and locations.
- Maps with the NAC grid system will be a low-cost but efficient tool for
emergency agents, taxi drivers, delivery agents, etc, to dispatch
and locate the addresses efficiently.
- Maps with the NAC grid system can exchange information with GPS directly
so that people equipped with GPS units can locate addresses with NACs
directly.
- Maps with the NAC grid system can help exchanging
information with other geographic information systems since the NAC
grid can be convert back to the Longitude/Latitude easily.
- Maps with the NAC grid system is extremely convenient for people to
express areas of different sizes and ratios of length to width,
for mining and explorations, meteorology phenomena, environmental
concerns, etc since these kinds of areas are not always the existing
political identities and have not simple names for them yet.
- A tourist map for a city with the NAC grid and a list of restaurants,
hotels, tourist agents, tourest interests spots, transportation stations,
start and end of streets, highways, etc with their Natural Area Codes
will be an extremely useful tool for all tourists.
- Rural road guides and country maps with the NAC grid will be the
favorite maps for all motorists.
Click to go to the beginning of FAQ.
How can I find the NAC for my home?
If you have a detail map with all building outlines and the NAC grid or a high resolution GPS unit with the NAC display, you can read the exact NAC of your home directly. If you do not have such maps or GPS units, you can go to a local, city or university library, to find a building outline map or topographic map on which you may find the exact geodetic coordinates of your home and then convert the coordinates into the NAC.Click to go to the beginning of FAQ.
How do The Natural Area Coding System improve the storing and retrieving of geographic and geospatial data?
Since The Natural Area Coding System has generated simple NACs for all areas on the earth and three-dimensional regions in the universe and short coordinates for all geodetic points, the system can significantly improve the structure of a geographic or geospatial database and reduce its storage size more than 80%. One of the structures of the system for managing a geographic database is described in the following:A NAC geographic information database for the whole earth surface stored in a computer contains two main directories. The first main directory is called the main NAC directory under which all geographic information is saved according to the NAC structure. The second main directory is called the main index directory under which all the information about geographic identities are linked to the NAC areas and the information about these identities can be retrieved from the NAC directories through the linkage.
The main NAC directory contains several files and first level NAC directories. The files are the information of the global geographic identities such as continent borders, ocean borders, country borders, global transportation networks, etc. The first NAC level directories contain the information of the first level NAC areas and named by the NAC of the first level NAC areas with a lower case hypen to link the two parts of a NAC such as N_K for NAC: N K. There are 900 first level NAC areas on the earth, so there will be 900 first level directories under the main NAC directory.
A first level NAC directory contains several files and second level NAC directories. The files are the information of the geographic identities of the size suitable to be shown on the first level NAC area map such as country borders, rivers, province borders, forests, deserts, etc. The geodetic coordinates of the geographic identities will be saved in relative NACs of the first level NAC area such as the absolute NAC of a geodetic point at NAC: NJKL KGDF will be saved as "JKL GDF" under the first NAC directory named by N_K. This arrangement can save lots of required memory. A second level NAC directory containes the geographic information of the second level NAC area and named by the relative NAC of the second level NAC area such as the second level NAC directory for the second level NAC area of NAC: NJ KG will be named as J_G under the first level NAC directory named by N_K. There are 900 second level NAC directories in total.
A second level NAC directory contains several files and third level NAC directories. The files are the geographic information suitable to be shown on the second level NAC area map. All the geodetic coordinates of the geographic information will be saved in relative NACs such as a geodetic point at NAC: NJKL KGDF will be saved as "KL DF" under the second level NAC directory named by J_G under the first level NAC directory named by N_K. A third level NAC directory will be named by its relative NAC such as the third level NAC directory for the third level NAC area of NAC: NJK KGD will be named as K_D under the second NAC directory named by J_G under the first level NAC directory named by N_K.
A third level NAC directory will be created in the same way as the second level NAC directory, so do a fourth or fifth level NAC directory.
The geographic identities such as a straight line section of any length parallel to the lines of constant longitude or constant latitude or an area of any size and any side ratio bounded by lines of constant longitude and constant latitude can be simply represented by a single NAC such as NAC: HJKL KG and NAC: HJKL KG--K are straight line sections while NAC: HJK KGD and NAC: HJK KGD-F are areas. These notations can save a lot of memory to represent these geographic identities. Many state and county boundaries in the United States are straight line sections parallel to the lines of constant longitude and constant latitude.
The second main directory is the main index directory which containes an index file and first level index directories for global geographic identities such as oceans, countries, etc. The index file lists all the names and their variations of the global geographic identities with their sequence indexes alphabetically. The sequence index of a global identity is a 30-based number expressed by 30 NAC characters. A first level index directory for a geographic identity will be named by its sequence index.
A first level index directory contains one index file and second level index directories for its second level geographic identities such as provinces, states, etc. The index file lists the NACs of the NAC areas covering the geographic identity on the first line and lists the names and their variations of second level geographic identities with their sequence indexes alphabetically. The second level index directories are named by their indexes listed in the index file.
A second level index directory has the same structure as the first level index directory, so does a third or fourth level index directory.
A user interface for the database may allow the user to input either a NAC of an area or a name of a geographic identity to retrieve the geographic data. If a NAC of an area is input, the computer will directly go to the NAC directory to retrieve the data. If a name of a geographic identity is input, the computer will go to the index directory to find out the NACs of the NAC areas covering the geographic identity, and then go to the NAC directories to retrieve the corresponding data.
There are three significant advantages of the NAC system over other databases:
- Using absolute NACs to represent geodetic points
can save about 50% of memory compared with using other systems;
- Using absolute NACs to represent straight line sections parallel to the lines of
constant longitude or constant latitude can save more then 75% of memory;
- Using absolute NACs to represent rectangular areas with the sides of constant
longitude and constant latitude can save 87% of memory;
- Using relative NACs to represent geodetic point, straight line sections or
rectangular areas can even more meomory.
- Using NACs to name the geographic database instead of direct using names
of geographic identities can easily link the geographic information between
neighboring geographic identities without the overlaps of geographic data;
- Using NACs to name the geographic databases allows users to retrieve their
interesting areas directly by typing in very few character NACs;
A NAC geodetic information management system for a three-dimensional database can be constructed in a way similar to a NAC geographic information management system for the earth surface, using the NACs of three-dimensional NAC geodetic blocks instead of two-dimensional NAC geographic cells as the directory names. The three-dimensional system will be very useful to geologists, oceanographists, meteorologists, miners, earth and space scientists.
Click to go to the beginning of FAQ.
How does NAC help dispatching addresses?
Let us first examine the possible methods used in the existing address dispatching systems for emergency agents.The three most popular methods are:
1. Training staff to know all streets and roads in a city and let the human brain store the information. This is the oldest methods and can work well in small cities. It does require a "reasonable" amount of time for the staff to learn the area, or that a knowledgable person is always on duty.
2. Using maps and street alphabet list with map grid coordinates. This is the method which can work more reliable than simply using human brains but not very efficient. The procedure to find an address may take more than five minutes. This method also involves a lot of work preparing lists of streets as the service area is changed.
3. Using computer address dispatching system. This is the most recent invention which can work more efficiently than method 2 and more reliable than method 1. The principle is similar to the second one.
Of course, it is even more reliable and efficient if all these three methods work together and many defects can be compensated by each other. But there are still many disadvantages in the existing system.
First, the database for the existing computer address dispatching is big. The computer may save all addresses and their coordinates in a database. The addresses are listed in alphabetical order by the street names and numbers. Once an address is read, the computer will look for the list and find out the coordinates of the address and then show it on a digitalized map on the screen. The size of the database of Toronto as an example may be about:
10,000 (streets) x 200 (street number/street in average) = 2,000,000 (addresses)
and each address and its coordinates need about 30 bytes. So all together the database is about 60 MB. This is a large database for a computer to process efficiently.
Second, the computer does not work at all when an address or a street name is not found in the database. This is not an uncommon situation since all cities, towns and communities are growing fast all the time and many new streets and houses are built and certain time of delay in the input of these addresses into the databases can not be avoided. The problem will happen when a call is from these addresses like the one happened recently in Scarborough in Metro Toronto which resulted in the death of the heart attack patient when the ambulance arrived 19 minutes after the call.
Third, when the computer system crashes, the address dispatching must be done manually, but the existing manual method takes at least two or three minutes to find a street from the street alphabet list and then using the 1x1 km grid cell coordinates to find the street on the map, in which cell there may be more than twenty streets. If the street is a new one which has not been printed on the map, then they will not find anything. If the street is very long, then they will not know exactly which section the street number is located and the result will be more ambiguous.
If NAC is used as the address dispatching system, both manual and computer dispatching systems can be greatly simplified and improved. When an NAC is read, people can use a map with NAC grid lines or computer to find the exact location of the address immediately since the NAC represents a pair of grid coordinates of the address. Manual dispatching with NAC can save the time in looking up street alphabet list as the existing system does and can tell the much more accurate location of the address in the map to eliminate the ambiguity of the existing map grid system. The process may need less than half minute.
Computer dispatching with NAC works in the same way as the manual method in principle but faster, which will show the location of the address on a digitalized map on the screen immediately once a NAC is input since the NAC is a pair of coordinates of the address. The computer address dispatching system with NAC does not need any databases and the process of looking up the street alphabet list. It will not have the serious problem of the existing system when the map is not recently updated since the NAC will show where the address is clearly.
The NAC system has another great advantage that the air ambulance can search for the address directly using a GPS system which can greatly speed and improve its services.
Once NAC is widely known, many other services and individual people can take the advantages from NAC. Taxi drivers are going to use GPS to find streets and addresses. If all the customers can directly tell the taxi drivers their NACs, the taxi will never have troubles finding addresses even without a current map. They don't necessary need so called streets and buildings computer databases. Of course, a computer database with current traffic information and routes optimization may further improve the service.
All restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, tourist interest places do not need to include any small maps to show their locations if the NACs are supplied together with their addresses in the ads. People can find the locations conveniently based on the NACs. They don't have to guess which bus stop is closest to their destination and avoid taking the wrong bus or getting off at the wrong stops.
Click to go to the beginning of the FAQ.
How large a database is required for the NAC mail sorting computer?
The database for the international postal zones will save all the information of the border of these zones. People can estimate how long all the border add together. There are less than 200 countries in the world. The biggest one is Russia which has border less than 40,000 km. The most conservative estimate is to assume each country is as large as Russia and the length of the border of all the international postal zones equals to 200x40,000=8,000,000 km. Now we need the information only for the purpose of the determination of the international zone of a mail destination, so we can ignore all the landscape of the area along the border and simply consider the information of the border. Assume that the border changes smoothly in the scale of 1 km in average, so we can use some interpolation scheme to epresent each 1 km border, i.e., we only need to save the coordinates of one point for each km. So all together, the database will contain 16,000,000 double precision data, which will be 8x16,000,000=128,000,000 bytes or 128 MB.If the international postal zones are reduced to 20 large zones (as large as Russia) by agreements, the database can be ten times smaller, i.e., 12 MB. If we take into account the facts that many coastal line borders can be simplified to be straight lines and many countries borders have already been straight lines, then the database will be even smaller. The national and local postal zone databases will be similar or smaller. Therefore, the memory for these databases summed together is less than 50 MB. This is not very large. However, since it is the most conservative estimation, an actual size of the required memory may be as small as 5 MB.
Click to go to the beginning of the FAQ.
Can international mail be sorted automatically and sent through optimized routes by the NAC mail sorting machine?
Yes. This is because a NAC can tell the exact location of a mail destination. Equipped with a database of the information about postal zones and transport routes, both national and international mails can be easily sorted automatically and transported through optimized routes. On the level of the international postal zones, a mail will be sent through the shortest route of the existing mail transport routes. For example, if there are certain amount of mails sent from Toronto to San Fransisco and there is an air line directly flying from Toronto to San Fransisco everyday, can the postal corporation save time and cost to send these mails by that airline instead of sending them to New York or Washington DC and from that point to San Fransisco? People may believe large countries may have already established more than one international postal terminal. But I will ask, how can a computer or person know where the mail destination is? San Fransisco may be famous, but how about a small county near San Fransisco? How can a computer understand the unstandard names of addresses written in different characters of different languages if there is no NAC on the mail? If they can not understand the addresses except the countries' names, the only transport route is to send the mails to the central postal terminal of the country. That is definitely not the most economic and efficient route.Therefore, the employment of the Natural Area Coding System can not only make the international mails sorted automatically but also transported through optimized routes.
Click to go to the beginning of the FAQ.
Is NAC natural?
What is natural? Is a force natural? Is a length natural? Everybody knows that everything can exist independent of our human being is natural. A force is a natural existence, so does a length, even though people can use different units or systems to represent them.The other important feature of the nature is the magnitude of a natural property can be measured scientificly, not like morality, beauty, etc.
Now people can see whether a Natural Area Code is natural or not. A NAC represents a point on the earth. It can exist without the need of human beings. It is also measurable, i.e., a GPS unit can measure it with high accuracy. So I conclude that NACs are natural. Anybody not agreeing with me is encouraged to criticize my point. Thanks. [This brief excursion into existential space courtesy of Xinhang :} - Todd]
Click to go to the beginning of the FAQ.
Can an object not exactly sphere mapped by a spherical coordinate system?
It is well know that an earth is very close to a sphere, but not exactly. Can a spherical coordinate system describe it accurately using only two angle coordinates? People with some knowledge about curved surface may answer immediately: Yes, Of course, because the earth surface is still a simple curved surface with exactly the same topology as a sphere and with unique correspondence between a physical point and a pair of coordinates (Longitude, Latitude).Click to go to the beginning of the FAQ.
What is the NAC mail sorting algorithm?
One of the sorting algorithms based on the NAC (assuming no changes required in the existing post services except the sorting program) is:First, find out the existing postal zone which the mail destination belongs to;
This work can be devided into three steps: 1. Check if the destination is in the local postal zones; 2. If yes, which is the postal zone? If not, check if the destination is in the country; 3. If yes, which is the destination city in the country? If not, which is the destination country?-
To check whether the destination is in a zone, one can compare the
the distance between the destination and the reference point of the zone
with the maximum distance of any point in the zone to the reference point.
If the distance of the destination to the reference point is larger than
the maximum distance, then the destination is outside of the zone.
If it is smaller than the maximum, then calculate the angle of the
vector from the reference point to the destination point, find out two
or three border nodes closest to the vector, and use these nodes to
interpolate the border node with the same angle as the destination point
to see the distance from the reference point to the interpolated node is
larger than the distance of the reference point to the destination point.
If it is larger, then the destination is in the zone, otherwise it is not.
To find out the zone the destination point is belong to can be done by the procedure above to check each zone on the same level until the zone is found.
Click to go to the beginning of the FAQ.
Does the introduction of NAC waste taxpayer's money or save the money?
Many people asked, why should we shift our existing systems to the NAC System by investing much taxpayer's money, and what are the real benefits that the NAC System gives people?Now, let me show you the reasons.
First, the introduction of the NAC as the global postal code system is voluntary. No one is forced to use it. It will work parallel to the existing system for a certain period, during which the interested post corporations can start to use the NAC System individually by simply installing a NAC sorting program in their existing sorting machines without the need to change anything else. Everybody, post corporation or government can wait until they really see the great advantages and benefits by using the NAC System.
Second, there does not exist any international postal code systems now. All the international mails are sorted manually which is in low efficiency and high cost. Although some people argue that the global postal code system has already been established simply adding an abbreviation of the country name suggested by the UN, it has never been used in any countries yet since the national postal code systems are not standard and the way to add the abbreviation is still not specified. For example, my postal code is M5T 1B3. If some body add "CA" to the postal code, it may look like CA M5T 1B3, or CAM5T 1B3, or CA ON M5T 1B3, or ON CA M5T 1B3. Which is the one that both the human being and computer can understand? On the other hand, it may duplicate the abbreviation of local provinces or states and cause a lot of confusion. Maybe, the computer could not reliably detemine which character string is a postal code string.
Third, although the postal code systems have been established in many countries, the maintenance of the systems cost huge amount of the taxpayer's money every year because the existing postal code system is based on the distribution of the post offices and transport routes of the post corporations, and any change in the post corporations needs the change of the postal codes. They need to specify new codes, cancel old codes, adjust the postal zones, publish postal codes books and postal zones atlases, and force people to change their codes, and to cause the loss of many mails due to the change of the codes. Everybody can estimate how much taxpayer's money is wasted in these unnecessary work and how much inconvenience the people feel.
Fourth, since the postal code systems are different, post offices send mail to a big country through a fixed route through which the mail always are transported very slowly and in high cost. For example, a letter from Wales, a town in Alaska to a Russian town Uelen closest to Wales might be transported to Moscow first and then from Moscow to the destination even if there were many direct transport links and huge amount of mail between these two towns. The final result is that more taxpayer's money is wasted and more inconvenience people feel.
Fifth, besides all these related to the post services, there are many other problems exist due to the lack of an good geocode system. In London, the ambulance has introduced a computer address dispatcher which costed more than 1.5 million pounds recently. The system is very complex and the efficiency is so low that an ambulance vehicle usually needs more than 15 minutes to reach an address after an emergency call. If the NAC is used, the computer dispatching time can be less than 10 seconds. You can see how many lives the ambulance can save in the saved time. It will be the same that the firefighters can save lives and property, police can stop the crimes and save victims in the time saved by the NAC System in dispatching addresses. Everbody can see who will be benefited.
There are also many other benefits that the NAC System can give people.
Click to go to the beginning of the FAQ.
How much population in the world know English alphabet?
People who have got primary education anywhere in the world usually know English alphabet. English alphabet is Latin alphabet which has been used in English which has become the most popular international communication tool, French, Spanish, German, and many other languages of Eurapean countries, African countries and Asian countries, etc. English alphabet has been adopted as the standard Chinese phonetic, and also used in geometry, algebra, chemistry, physics, ..., computer languages, computer keyboard, etc. Both South and North Americas, Africa, most of Europe and Asia, Australia and New Zealand, have used Latin alphabet as part of their written characters. That is, people able to read and write usually know the alphabet. Using digits and English alphabet as the standard global postal code characters will not have any problems for people with certain education. Only illiterate people may have problems in using the alphabet the same as their own languages, but it is not that the selection of characters can help if they keep illiterate. People need not worry the reading and writing of the alphabet used in the NAC System for all people with certain education in the whole world.Click to go to the beginning of the FAQ.
Does a NAC have self error-detecting function?
Yes. Many people suggested to include an extra character to be the error detecting character. Once a miswritten NAC is input, the mail sorting computer can find out the error immediately, which can prevent a local mail from sending to other countries or continents. It is a good idea but will add more burden to people to remember a NAC and have more chance to include errors too.Fortunately, a NAC has already certain self error-detecting function. It is well known that most of the earth surface is covered by oceans where no people live and no country is. Therefore, an international postal zone database can easily supply the information where people do not live. When a wrong NAC is read by a mail sorting computer, if the first or second character in a string of the NAC is wrong, it is most propably within an ocean and the computer can notice it easily. If only the third or fourth character is wrong, it may still represent a location locally and can be corrected easily by the post office near the destination, using the common address. So they will not be a serious problem.
Now let me estimate the probability of wrong NACs which will not be noticed by a mail sorting computer. We assume that the probability of wrong NACs is about 5%, half of which has wrong characters in the first or second position of either string of a NAC, then the probability of very wrong NACs is about 2.5%. If the wrong NACs represent areas in some countries, they will not be noticed by the computer. The area on the earth surface which belongs to countries is only about 20% of the total earth surface. Therefore, the probability of wrong NACs not being noticed by the mail sorting computer is 2.5% multiplied by 20% equal to 0.5% of total mails. It is a very small percentage.
The NAC system can find out about 80% of very wrong NACs and 40% of total wrong NACs. It has already certain self error-detecting function. Therefore, we don't need to introduce any extra characters to function as an error checker.
Click to go to the beginning of the FAQ.
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