A
large number of countries in the world have only a few streets and properties
with an official street name or number. Ghana falls into this category. This
results in significant obstacles for the efficient running of central / local
government planning and services; the provision of utilities; mail; emergency
services and commerce in general. As well as efficient operation of services,
the ability to control and collect domestic and non domestic property tax is
severely hampered.
In
an attempt to address the issues raised above, I have been involved in a
project to allocate official names for every street in Ghana together with an
official address for every property. In Ghana, this involves naming and
numbering roughly 1 million streets and 30 million properties. The remit of the
project is to ensure the appropriate infrastructure is in place to maintain
this data set and enable access to both public and private sector
organisations.
The
issues surrounding the project were significant. As very few streets and
properties had an official address, the volume of naming and numbering was
vast. The resources, both from a people and technical perspective, were
limited. There was also a cultural and potentially more difficult problem to
resolve due to the reluctance of local populations to conform to the imposition
of names and conventions from any official body. People would often continue to
use the local alias for a location even when official naming and numbering took
place.
The project encountered numerous technical considerations. The use of long street names where official names had been allocated. Inconsistencies when abbreviations and punctuation were used.
The variety of dwellings also varied considerably; from the ordered ones in the more affluent areas to densely populated and chaotic ones in less affluent areas. Mixed dwellings where parts of the building were used for commercial purposes and part for residential were common.
This is part of a fairly striking set of buildings that make up the Villagio complex near the airport in Accra.
There were many instances of permanent and temporary structures being side by side. Temporary structures were sometimes wooden shacks selling goods; sometimes even metal containers. Most of these fell within our scope as they were still charged business rates and were potential clients for utility and other commercial providers.
There
were countless alleyways, footpaths and squares across the most densely
populated and compact areas, lined with both residential and commercial
properties.
Given
the numerous and varied issues, our approach to the project had to be carefully
considered. We identified the positive aspects and tried to work that to our
advantage. Above all, we had to be practical at every stage.
The
lack of formal street naming and number meant we didn’t have to deal with
multiple legacy conventions. Ghana also has very well defined, hierarchical
spatial boundaries across the whole country. At the top level it has 10
regions, then districts, sub-metro and communities. It has a very well defined
official street naming and numbering convention, however the implementation of
these conventions was patchy. There were existing projects with national
coverage that use addresses which could both contribute and benefit from our
project. As in most of Africa, there is a very significant use of mobile phones
and familiarity with mobile technology and conventions. There are some very
clever people with the vision, drive and influence to resolve any problem.
Our
key strategy was to use data from the National Waste Bin Distribution project.
The aim of this project was to visit every household in Ghana to see if they
required a bin collection service. As they were recording the GPS co-ordinates
of every household using a mobile app, our project simply used this data to
derive the properties and first approximation of streets. The streets were then
improved on by more conventional means through a map digitisation project used
by the bin collection service. We used our software, already developed for the
UK market, to then allocate unique identifiers to streets, properties and
addresses. This made the project very cost effective and quicker to implement.
Some
core principles enshrined in the British Standard, BS7666, were used. This
included using a Unique Property Reference, Unique Street Reference and the
concept of a Land and Property Unit. The use of multiple addresses including
alternates, provisional and historic was adopted, as well as the ability to
hold multiple application cross references to enable efficient system
integration.
The
project then deviated from the British Standard by ditching certain conventions
like postal addresses. New concepts like street aliases to cater for existing
local names were introduced. This recognised the need to not impose official
names, but to accommodate local ones so as not to alienate the local
population. The adoption of the official names would be a gradual process when
the benefit from receiving efficient services was realised. The unofficial
locality information was included in the address to increase adoption. Both the
streets and addresses inherited all the spatial characteristics associated with
an address to avoid joining different types of data to realise the full
address.
There
was still a requirement for a postal code system even though no legacy system
exists as in the UK. There was a debate on whether this was needed, but the
prevalence of these types of codes and use in devices such as SatNavs swayed
the argument. Rather than devise a completely new convention, we decided to
adopt a 3 word address as generated by the award winning company what3words.
What3words have invented an algorithm to describe each 3 by 3 metre grid on the
planet by using a combination of 3 English language words. Each street segment
is allocated its own 3 word address which acts as a post code. It is a “user
friendly” way of defining any location on the earth. The Latitude and Longitude
convention is anything but.
Another
key part of the strategy was to focus on manageable areas and not tackle the
whole country to start with. This enabled strategies, conventions and technical
issues to be formulated and teething issues ironed out before applying them to
a larger area. Prioritisation of areas such as the capital Accra also ensured
maximum benefit as early as possible.
Lessons learnt in
the UK also helped steer the project away from time consuming and costly
initiatives. For example, the need for absolute geographical accuracy of all
properties in Ghana is a massive undertaking. This level of accuracy isn’t
required to generate a good set of street names and property numbers.
Ultimately the presence of a consistent set of addresses is the primary driver
for improvement and efficiency. Then using tried and tested conventions,
techniques and software used in the UK, married with innovations such as those
introduced by what3words will act as a catalyst to boost the provision of
public services, commerce and the general well-being of the citizens of Ghana.
