Posted by Dr Serena Coetzee on 29 Oct 2009, 13:52 (last modified on 11 Nov 2009, 13:32)

SANS 1883, Geographic information – Addresses, South Africa’s homegrown address standard was officially launched by Mr Sazi Zangqa, Senior Manager: Standards Compliance at the SABS, on 15 October 2009. At the occasion, Dr Serena Coetzee, project leader of SANS 1883 and a member of the Department of Computer Science, as well as Mr Antony Cooper, chair of the local geographic information standardization committee, SABS SC71E, and currently busy with a PhD in the department, received a complementary copy of the South African address standard as a token of appreciation for their contributions to the standard.

The aim of the South African address standard is not to devise a new system of addressing nor to build a national address database, but rather to enable interoperability in address data, which will facilitate the allocation of addresses and the use of address data. Referring to his own personal experience of growing up in a rural village without a home address, Mr Zangqa described the launch as an important milestone in the history of South Africa.

Dr Coetzee also leads an international address standardization project within ISO/TC211, Geographic information/Geomatics. Various members of the SANS 1883 project team are participating in this international project, making sure that South Africa's requirements are met.

Dr Coetzee leads the Polelo research group in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria. Her research interests are spatial databases, distributed systems, standards and spatial data infrastructures. Mr Antony Cooper works from CSIR's Built Environment is currently busy with a PhD on volunteered geographic information and spatial data infrastructures. He is a member of the Polelo research group.