SANS1883, Geographic information - Addresses
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The South African Bureau of Standards (SABS), through Standards South Africa (StanSA), prepares and publishes South African national standards, identified by the letters SANS. These standards reflect national consensus on a wide range of subjects, and are aimed at improving the quality of life of all South Africans. The standards are developed by experts in the field from across government, industry and academia, working through Technical Committees (TCs) and Sub-Committees (SCs).

SABS SC 71E, Geographic Information deals with standards for geographic information for South Africa.

StanSA maintains liaison with international standardization bodies such as ISO and IEC, and regional bodies such as SADCSTAN. When a new standards project comes under consideration, there are two possibilities: either adopt an existing international or regional standard, or develop a South African standard.

In August 2004, SC 71E voted for a new work item proposal on “A standard framework for South African addresses”, subsequently given the designation SANS 1883. It was decided that the standard should support:

    1. The allocation and management of addresses;
    2. The recording and interchange of addresses;
    3. The geo-coding and spatial representation of addresses;
    4. The delivery of services throughout South Africa;
    5. The national developmental objectives.
The aim of the address standard is not to devise a new system of addressing or to build a national address database, but rather to enable interoperability in address datasets, which will facilitate developing a national address database.

Since there is no current ISO address standard, a South African project team was established in June 2006 to prepare the first draft of SANS 1883. Apart from the input from its members, the project team also refers to other address standards such as those defined by the British Standards Institute (BSI), the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC in the US), the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), the councils of standards of Australia and New Zealand, and the Universal Postal Union (UPU).

The following organizations participated in the project meetings of SANS 1883, or contributed to SANS 1883 through correspondence:

AfriGIS, Business Connexion, Central University of Technology, Coega Development Corporation, CSIR, Eskom, Electoral Commission (IEC), Department of Agriculture, Department of Arts and Culture, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Drakenstein Municipality, E-Intelligence, Experian, Geo-Information Society of South Africa (GISSA), Geospace, GIMS, Knowledge Factory, Metropolitan municipalities of Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, Ethekwini, Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane, Munsys, Inc, National Spatial Information Framework (NSIF), Oracle, Propnet, Prosource, Saldanha Bay Municipality, SA Post Office, South African Geographical Names Council (SAGNC), South African Revenue Service (SARS), SAS, State IT Agency (SITA), Statistics SA, Telkom, TransUnion, University of Pretoria.