Kewal Shienmar
Managing Director
Stichting Mapcode Foundation
Netherlands

Biography
Seasoned professional with experience in Satellite Navigation, GIS and LBS. He possesses a unique blend of business and technical acumens with a wide knowledge of digital maps and their market. He has previously worked for Navteq (Here Maps) and in 2006; he joined TomTom, a global leader in navigation and mapping products. Since 2012, Kewal has been active in location encoding as Managing Director of the Mapcode Foundation where he has co-launched mapcodes and is responsible for providing the solution as a free worldwide addressing standard.

Abstract
Mapcode - A Short Address for Any Location on Earth

Co-Author: Peter Geelen, Director, Stichting Mapcode Foundation

A mapcode is a code consisting of two groups of letters and digits, separated by a dot. It represents a location on the surface of the Earth, within the context of a specified country or territory. The mapcode system is a free, brand-less, international standard for representing any location on the surface of the Earth by a short, easy to recognize and remember “code", usually consisting of between 4 and 7 letters and digits. The shortness of mapcodes is the key differentiating factor between coordinates and other codes; more densely populated areas are designated with shorter 4 character codes. Mapcodes are accurate enough for public, every-day use and supported on over 60m car navigation devices world-wide. Particularly useful in countries that don't have a universal address or postal system; a small drinking well in the Saharan desert, the back door of a bar on one of the Kiribati islands, a dwelling in a slum near Mumbai airport - has such a short code, which uniquely identifies that location and will bring you to within a few metres of it. The mapcode system defines a way to convert between the latitude and longitude of a location (such as measured through the GPS satellite system) and a short code. The system works anywhere on earth, and on any map. By using massive amounts of data gathered over the past 30 years by TomTom Maps, a data table has been constructed that defines mapcodes for every “context" on earth, (each of the 200+ countries and nations, each of the 100 overseas dependencies and each of 240 autonomous and semi-autonomous states, provinces, republics and provinces. It also defines the most densely populated areas in each of these territories to reserve the shortest mapcodes for them. The Mapcode system is developed by the founders of TomTom, Pieter Geelen and Harold Goddijn. It has been donated to The Mapcode Foundation, which is responsible for ensuring the technology is made freely available to everyone.