OGLAP turns a point on the map into an address with institutional memory: country, region, locality, grid cell, and microspot all carried in the code itself. The protocol works deterministically offline, with no API key, no vendor gate, and no network dependency.
When a place cannot be named in a stable, machine-readable way, the consequences compound: failed deliveries, slower emergency response, incomplete public records, and financial services that never arrive. The paradox is sharpest where connectivity is weakest.
OGLAP starts from a simple conviction: an address should be usable by residents, legible to institutions, and computable by machines, even when the network disappears. Every format decision serves that idea.
The code begins with real jurisdiction: country, region, local zone, then fine grid. An institution can sort, aggregate, audit, or delegate without asking an outside service where the address belongs.
After the reference files are loaded, encoding and decoding happen locally. No server to reach, no quota to exhaust, no signal to hope for. The same coordinate produces the same code everywhere.
Short, visually distinct segments reduce the effort of reading, dictating, and transcribing. OGLAP is designed for forms, phone calls, notebooks, SMS, and real workflows, not only databases.
Released under MIT with attribution, OGLAP can be audited, adapted, and governed locally. No vendor controls access to the protocol, the data, or the evolution of a national deployment.
The engine stays common, but each country brings its own hierarchy, boundaries, and naming conventions. Portability does not mean flattening the world; it means making each territory computable on its own terms.
Most geocoders choose between machine precision and human readability. OGLAP produces both from the same computation: a formal code for systems, and a local address people can actually say and recognize.
Deploying OGLAP does not require rewriting the encoder. Territorial knowledge lives in three JSON files validated at startup: the boundaries, names, hierarchy, and rules that make a code truly belong to a country.
Defines how the grid behaves: cell sizes, alphabet, resolution rules, naming conventions, country extent, CRS, and version compatibility.
Carries administrative geometries, zone codes, place identifiers, and parent-child relationships. It is the institutional map the protocol makes computable.
Bundles the places, structured addresses, metadata, and bounding boxes needed for spatial lookup and reverse geocoding.
| Dimension | What3Words | Plus Codes | OGLAP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing | Proprietary, patented | Open (Apache 2.0) | MIT + Attribution |
| Offline capability | Recently added | Full | Full · 3 config files |
| Code format | ///three.dictionary.words | 6CX8MC66+3Q4 | GN-CON-QYTC-B0B1-2282 |
| Spatial precision | 3 m × 3 m | ~3.5 m max | 1 m × 1 m microspot |
| Spatial intuition | Low | Low | High · hierarchical |
| Administrative context | None | None | Full hierarchy |
| Gov. adoption readiness | Proprietary dependency | Abstract, non-territorial | Designed for institutions |
| Data sovereignty | Commercial servers | Tied to Google Maps | Fully sovereign & local |
For billions of people, the absence of an address is not an administrative anomaly: it is a daily infrastructure failure. It makes places harder to deliver to, rescue, register, finance, and govern.
Existing tools often solve the coordinate, but not the context. They describe a point in space without necessarily carrying the jurisdiction, governance, readability, or field constraints that determine whether an address will actually be adopted.
OGLAP proposes another path: embed the geocode in the administrative and territorial structure of the country that uses it. Its dual-format model gives systems a complete hierarchical code, such as GN-CON-QYTC-B0B1-2282, and gives people a derived, readable, local address, such as B0B1-2282 Yattaya Fossedè, Conakry, Guinea. The protocol remains portable by design, but every deployment respects the territory it serves.
Explore the full specification, try the engine in the developer playground, or integrate the reference SDKs directly.