A piece of software has been released that allows public
and private sector organisations, such as the emergency services
and insurance firms, to search more than 813,000 postal and
non-postal addresses in Northern Ireland.
They can quickly pinpoint buildings to within one metre of their
location.
Quickaddress with Pointer was developed by QAS in collaboration
with Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland (OSNI) and uses OSNI's
Pointer Plus data, a comprehensive commercial address database.
Previously, public and private sector organisations such as the
emergency services, utilities and insurance companies had to rely
on the Royal Mail PAF database.
Stan Brown, acting chief executive of Ordnance Survey, said,
"Quickaddress with Pointer is the first single database of all
addressable properties for a UK region. Employing groundbreaking
software, it stores more than 813,000 postal and non-postal
addresses in Northern Ireland."
Harry Meikle, QAS group managing director, said, "The ability to
pinpoint exact locations to the property level is critical for many
types of organisations seeking to offer improved services."
He added that by using Quickaddress with Pointer, local
government and utility companies, for example, can make service
provisions more effectively, and insurance, financial or
environmental firms can perform risk analysis based on accurate
address data.
There are, however, no plans to produce similar software for
other UK regions.