The Natural Area Code is a proprietary geocode system for identifying an area anywhere on the Earth, or a volume of space anywhere around the Earth. The use of thirty alphanumeric characters instead of only ten digits makes a NAC shorter than its numerical latitude/longitude[/altitude] equivalent. A geocode is a geographical code to identify a point or area at the surface of the earth. ... Earth (often referred to as the Earth, Terra, or Planet Earth) is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth largest. ... Earth (often referred to as the Earth, Terra, or Planet Earth) is the third planet in the solar system in terms of distance from the Sun, and the fifth largest. ...

The system is copyrighted by NAC Geographic Products, Inc.

Two-dimensional system

Instead of numerical longitudes and latitudes, a base 30 grid with 30 rows and 30 columns - each denoted by the numbers 0-9 and the twenty consonants of the Latin alphabet - is laid over the globe. The datum used is the World Geodetic System (WGS) of 1984. A NAC cell can be subdivided repeatedly into smaller NAC grids to produce an arbitrarily small area. Longitude, sometimes denoted by the Greek letter λ, describes the location of a place on Earth east or west of a north-south line called the Prime Meridian. ... Latitude, usually denoted symbolically by the Greek letter φ, gives the location of a place on Earth north or south of the Equator. ... Base 30 or trigesimal is a positional numeral system using 30 as the radix. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

The NAC represents an area on the earth. When the represented area is small enough, a NAC represents a location. Therefore, it is a unified representation of both an area and a location. An eight or ten character NAC is also called a Universal Address, because it can uniquely specify every building, house, parking meter, fire hydrant, street light, tree or any other fixed object in the world. An eight-character NAC specifies an area no larger than 25 metres by 50 metres, while a ten-character NAC cell is no larger than 0.8 metres by 1.6 metres. A Universal Address is an eight or ten character Natural Area Code (NAC) to represent the exact location of a building, house, gate, door, bus stop, etc anywhere in the world. ... For other uses, see Building (disambiguation). ... House - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... A traditional style parking meter A parking meter is a device used to collect money in exchange for the right to park a vehicle in a particular place for a limited amount of time. ... City Fire Hydrant A fire hydrant (also known colloquially as a fire plug in the USA or as a johnny pump in New York City, ) is a source of water provided in most urban, suburban, and rural areas with municipal water service to enable firefighters to tap into the municipal... A roadway light in front of a red sky at night A street light, street lamp, light standard or lamp standard, is a raised source of light on the edge of a road, turned on or lit at a certain time every night. ... The coniferous Coast Redwood, the tallest tree species on earth. ...

For example, the ten-character NAC for the centre of the city of Brussels is HBV6R RG77T. Nickname: The Capital Of Europe, Comic City City of a 100 Museums Map showing the location of Brussels in Belgium Coordinates: Country Belgium Region Brussels-Capital Region Founded 797 Founded (Region) June 18, 1989 Mayor (Municipality) Freddy Thielemans Area    - City 162 (Region) km²  (62. ...

Extension to three dimensions

The full NAC system provides a third coordinate: altitude. This coordinate is the arctangent of the altitude, relative to the Earth's radius, and scaled so that the zero point (000...) is at the centre of the Earth, the midpoint (H00...) is the local radius of the geoid, i.e. the Earth's surface, and the endpoint (ZZZ...) is at infinity. In mathematics, the trigonometric functions are functions of an angle, important when studying triangles and modeling periodic phenomena. ...

For example, the three-dimensional NAC for the centre of Brussels, at ground level, is HBV6R RG77T H0000.

External links

• http://www.nacgeo.com