Assessing the cognitive advantages of different systems for the explicit encoding of location

Maps have been for a long time the only way to organize and communicate 
spatial information. Recent GPS assisted technologies allow people to 
find their location and navigate without interfacing a map. When 
communicating one’s location, people exchange linguistic information. 
Now location is encoded in many different ways (addressess, coordinate 
systems, etc.) and while most places are not defined in some systems 
(most new urban developments do not have address systems), many location 
encondings are not easily unerstood or communicated (few people master 
coordinate systems.) The purpose of the internship is to enlist and 
evaluate different spatial encoding systems in terms of their usability, 
under a number of (to be defined) cognitive, ecological and social 
constraints. The starting point is the following paper: 
https://github.com/google/open-location-code/wiki/Evaluation-of-Location-Encoding-Systems

The deliverable is a refinement of the classification of location 
enconding systems proposed in the paper and the definition of dimensions 
of evaluation, and possibly of experimental designs for assisting the 
evaluation.

The internship takes place at IJN and at Attoma Paris 
(http://www.attoma.eu/).