Site gets 111 addresses on track

People can check emergency services have the right details on how to find them using a new website www.myaddress.co.nz.

A campaign by Terralink International, the company providing physical address and location data to emergency services under a commercial contract, says New Zealanders need to check, confirm or change their address details to ensure they get help when minutes matter after dialling 111.

Fire, ambulance and police rely on a comprehensive mapping system to locate people who dial 111. But often the data doesn’t always have information about the best entrance points for a property, or alternative names for roads.

For instance, State Highway 16 through Helensville is known as Mill Rd at the town’s south-west entrance and Commercial Rd through town. SH16 is known as Port Albert Rd west of Wellsford and SH1 is also called Rodney St in Wellsford township.

The website emerged after a number of incidents where emergency services couldn’t find an address because they were given a local name for a road or an address instead of its official name, Terralink managing director Mike Donald says.

New Zealand has about 70,000 named roads and the official emergency service database has aliases for 5 percent of these and aliases for 2 percent of the two million recorded addresses.

Mr Donald believe there may be up to 50,000 more unrecorded aliases.

The free website allows users to see the location detail, its physical location on a high-resolution aerial image, and they can confirm or correct their address or add other details.

Any new information users submit will be verified by Terralink before being added to the emergency services database.

- © Fairfax NZ News