Eniwa City Council becomes first council in Japan to adopt what3words

25/05/2023

Today Eniwa City Council has announced their adoption of what3words to improve incident reporting processes for residents, helping to preserve the beauty of the local area. Eniwa City Council is the first council in Japan to adopt the revolutionary location technology. Now when residents report incidents using what3words, maintenance teams can pinpoint the precise location - streamlining the response process and ensuring issues can be addressed as soon as possible.

Councils across the globe work hard to respond to a wide range of issues every day – from injured animals and broken streetlights to fallen trees and water leaks, but locating them can be a difficult and time consuming task, particularly when they occur in areas without a street address.

what3words solves this problem by providing a simple way to communicate any precise location. It has divided the world into a grid of 3 metre squares and given each square a unique combination of three random words: a what3words address. This means that every building entrance, picnic bench, bin, pothole and meet-up spot in a park or on a beach has its own unique address, allowing users to easily communicate and navigate to anywhere in the world. For example, ///tigers.grinning.wharfs will take you to a specific bench overlooking the Crane Fountain in Hibiya Park, Tokyo – the perfect spot for a picnic.

The use of what3words is rapidly increasing across Japan. Restaurants and hotels are listing their what3words addresses to help guests to find them, and in March NAVITIME Japan announced what3words had been made available on its flagship navigation app, NAVITIME. Last year Subaru Corporation also became the first automaker globally to bring what3words voice entry in Japanese with their All-New Crosstrek.

Shin Iwai, Senior Japanese Partnerships Lead at what3words commented “what3words adds a layer of precision that is necessary for the way we live today and for the technology of tomorrow, and we see huge potential for growth in Japan. We’re proud to be working with Eniwa City Council to make it easy for the public to report the precise location of local issues, and ensure maintenance teams can find and address incidents as soon as possible.”