Global location system

Project Meridian

Online
v0.1.0 · Candidate E
Candidate E is the definitive Project Meridian test architecture. Meridian Key is still pre-1.0, so development keys are not yet guaranteed permanent until the 1.0 specification and normative vectors are frozen.

The product is Meridian Key. In normal use: Meridian.

Send me your Meridian.

Meridian turns any point on Earth into a compact human-friendly key. It covers streets, buildings, forests, deserts, oceans and the poles with the same format, and the horizontal key can be generated and decoded entirely offline.

“What’s your Meridian?” “My Meridian is WOLACET-VMWKBA.” “Send me your Meridian.”
Coverage Whole Earth
Published classes 10 m · 3 m · 1 m
Core network Not required
Architecture Candidate E

Encode

Coordinates → Meridian

Candidate E
Horizontal resolution class 1 m
6 locator characters · maximum cell edge 1 m
Meridian Key Not generated
Place / property / nearest address Not resolved

Decode

Meridian → Geographic cell

Candidate E
No Meridian decoded

Paste a Meridian Key to inspect its cell.

Location context not resolved.

Live test

Candidate E interactive validator

Live · Candidate E
Click anywhere to generate a Candidate E Meridian.
Map resolution 1 m 6 locator characters
Selected Meridian No location selected
Map elevation Not resolved
Place / property / nearest address Not resolved

The browser demo currently visualises satellite imagery with Esri World Imagery and street mapping with OpenStreetMap. Candidate E horizontal encode/decode and the application shell are cached for offline use after the first successful load. Online context resolution checks named places, businesses, property/building polygons and property addresses before falling back to the nearest mapped address with its distance. Offline, the same model is designed to use downloadable regional packs.

How Candidate E works

One format. Everywhere.

A Meridian is a pronounceable global zone name followed by a progressive local locator.

WOLACET-VMWK10 mStandard
WOLACET-VMWKB3 mFine
WOLACET-VMWKBA1 mPrecise

1 · Meridian Name

Human-friendly zone

Earth is divided into 6,998,400 fixed geometric zones. Each receives a deterministic six- or seven-letter pronounceable Meridian Name.

2 · Locator

Progressive precision

Four locator characters give the 10 m class. Add one for 3 m. Add one more for 1 m. Each longer key refines the same place.

3 · Whole Earth

No political dependency

Countries, states, postcodes and towns are not part of the code. The same mathematics covers land, sea, desert, forest, ice and the poles.

4 · Offline core

No server to decode

The horizontal key is reversible mathematics. Maps, addresses, imagery and elevation add context but never define the Meridian itself.

How we got here

Why Candidate E became Meridian.

Earlier experiments tested country/area prefixes, numeric and alphanumeric region identifiers, and shorter local code ideas. They taught us what not to tie a global location system to: political borders, uneven administrative areas, populated-place assumptions or a central lookup service. Candidate E keeps the human-friendly part but derives it from a fixed global geometry.

Why it is the best design so far

Candidate E strengths

  • One globally consistent syntax from houses to open ocean.
  • 10 m, 3 m and 1 m classes with conservative maximum cell-edge guarantees.
  • Pronounceable first part instead of a long regional number.
  • Progressive locator: extra characters refine rather than replace the key.
  • Offline encode/decode with no country database or API dependency.
  • More than nine million possible Meridian Names for about seven million zones, leaving reserve capacity.
  • External data can improve maps and addresses without changing Meridian Core.

Known trade-offs

Candidate E limitations

  • It is still pre-1.0; exact boundary vectors and safety filtering are not frozen.
  • Synthetic names are memorable but unfamiliar until people learn the system.
  • A checksum/error-detection rule is still under evaluation.
  • A 1 m Meridian cell does not make a phone GPS fix accurate to 1 m.
  • Addresses and building labels depend on the quality and licensing of external datasets.
  • High-detail offline imagery and LiDAR packs can be large.

Mapping and accuracy

Use many sources. Keep their evidence separate.

Meridian's data-fusion layer compares independent open datasets for buildings, addresses, named fields, businesses, roads, terrain and imagery. Containment wins over proximity: a pin inside a named field should return the field name, and a pin inside a property/building block should use that block's linked address before nearest-address fallback.

Loading…registered source families in the Candidate E fusion registry
OpenStreetMapOvertureMicrosoft BuildingsOpenAddresses OS Open UPRNOS Open GreenspaceSport England Active Places CopernicusESA WorldCoverOpenAerialMap Environment Agency LiDARUSGSUSDOT NAD

These sources are part of the Project Meridian fusion architecture and regional offline-pack plan; the lightweight browser demo does not download the full world datasets into your device.

Location context priority

Say what the pin is actually inside.

Meridian separates the coordinate from the human description around it. The context resolver prefers a containing business, property/building block or named area. If none is available, it falls back to the nearest mapped address and states the distance rather than pretending that address is the selected point.

Named area

Field-wide names

A named playing-field, park or greenspace polygon applies anywhere inside that polygon. Sport England site names can enrich unnamed sports polygons in the GB offline pack.

Property

Building/block containment

If a property/address anchor belongs to a building block, any pin inside that block can inherit the linked property address instead of using an unrelated neighbour.

Business

Keep the place name

Business and POI evidence is retained separately from the building/address evidence, so names such as pubs, shops and facilities are not discarded.

Fallback

Nearest address + distance

If the pin is in an unnamed field or another unmapped place, Meridian can still say which mapped address is nearest and how many metres away it is.

Current architecture

Candidate E

The definitive pre-1.0 Project Meridian test system. New work targets Candidate E only.

Next milestone

Candidate E hardening

Boundary vectors, word-safety filtering, checksums, exhaustive conformance testing and production offline packs.

Product language

Meridian Key

Formal product: Meridian Key. Everyday language: “Meridian”. Example: “My Meridian is WOLACET-VMWKBA.”