Same with the Canals near us
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So, a question for Team GR.
I can get from a W3W ref, to a Lat Long, to driving directions, to OS Maps, to a 10 fig GR.
What’s the easiest way to get from a GR, to Lat Long, so as to get driving directions? (I don’t see a need to get all the way back to W3W.)
Blimey, I drop off-line for a quick hop to the south of France & the servers melt down. 
Even for Gold DofE, or similar higher level activities, the common denominator is the person (or persons) reading the map to provide coordinates in an emergency / very high stress situation.
Whilst practice “emergency situation” events will help, it’s not the same as when the sh*t hits the fan, anything that can assist in passing an accurate location should be used. Even members of staff can make mistakes - I was mentoring a newbie instructor at Cranditz, local day navex, nice weather. A student toppled over with an epileptic fit; newbie instructor had a bit of a brain-freeze & started to pass an incorrect GR to get the safety vehicle en-route. Then, good recovery, he separately asked 2 students to give him a GR - both of theirs were correct (I was checking!).
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Drop a pin in OS Maps. Hit share. Link has decimalised lat/long.
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Excellent! Thank you.
Edit: Ok, so I copied the data from the share link, but can’t get that to open in Google maps by dropping it in to the app. is there a quicker route?
My question is why can’t the emergency services deal with any form of common positional data (lat/long, OS Grid etc). Seems to me that should be a fairly key requirement of any command & control system? Surely you must use mapping software in that command & control system…?
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I just deleted the guff around the lat long.
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I thought as much, shame they can’t tie in to Google Maps
Or just use OS Locate rather than maps - you can change the setting to show lat/long.
Edit: that puts annoying words around it when you try and share it as well.
“Reet lad, turn out by t’Wheatsheaf pub, head up dale towards John Barraclough’s farm - at the hefty bend in t’road where Ma Clitheroe tipped over her tractor 10 year’s ago, that’s where we are…”
I’ve just emailed them with some feedback that it would be super useful to share a raw lat/long coord (withou the guff around it) so you could drop it directly into Google Maps.
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Yeah, that would be the boy.
I think we might play this out as a scenario on the next Lowland Leader Training course and see how it goes in the incident management bit.
‘Your group has given you a W3W location of…’. What are your next steps?
vs.
‘Your group has given you an OS GR of …’ What are your next steps?
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Lack of joined up systems is the answer, there was never a National programme to develop systems so everyone just bought what they identified as the need at the time. (This goes for all 3 of the main Emergency Services).
The Met is still using CAD which is over 30 years old but does have the ability to send mapping down to the Car. Other Forces have better systems in the control room but no way of sending it down to you on the ground except by voice and then you have to programme it into a commercial SatNav or your Phone.It’s a total hodgepodge. I would expect Forces in the sticks to be better setup up for this sort of scenario than those in Urban Areas. The real issue is if you are in the more remote bit of a more Urban focussed organisation.
Oh and you generally can’t just pass stuff from 1 forces Command Control to another directly as they are all different types, you often have to phone up through 101.
I didn’t mean to start a W3W war but great discussion!
I’ve been teaching cadets GR as the main method of describing location, together with a feature preferably, among others in RAFAC.
For locations for emergency services, which usually comes up during first aid courses, I teach lat/long from Google Maps/Apple equivalent etc. Lat/long to 3 decimal places (about 120m) is as good as GR. 4 decimal places (12m) is more than good enough for locating someone.
When W3W is raised, as it often is, I don’t think it offers us anything that GR and lat/long don’t, so I don’t teach it or recommend it.
Of the 2 Police Forces I’ve worked for 1 of them would be able to use Lat & Long, the other wouldn’t at least not easily.
They would both generally however be able to use W3W quite easily (one of them very easily as every Cop had the programme provided on their Device).
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I’ve seen a W3W reference turning up on an EASP recently as an ERV with emergency services.
Thoughts on using it for that?
Same arguments apply I guess. What happens when you need to find that ERV on the trg area map?
For passing the location to the emergency services only, probably fine - but for briefing other staff / participants about the ERV? Not so sure.
I think it’s like everything, if there is more than 1 way of conveying the information have them all listed.
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Could be a useful thing to have on an RV list. GR in one column, W3W in the next.
I recall having an argument over the radio when I was a cadet with a staff member about which one of us was actually standing at RV18 on Woodbury Common.
A simultaneous W3W check would have easily demonstrated that I was.
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