Over the last decade it has become widely acknowledged that well constructed addressing systems and good quality address data constitute an important part of a society’s infrastructure. More recently, the work done by EURADIN, a Best Practice Network funded by the EU under the eContentplus programme, has again shown this to be true.

Every day addresses are used as a common language to provide citizens, business entities and public administrations with a simple and clear description of locations.

The majority of economic activity consists of people in organizations supplying goods and services to other people and organizations at places described by an address. Good quality addressing can make a substantial difference to the efficiency with which this is done and has a material impact upon the value or cost of the services provided.

Additionally, addresses are used as the common reference, when people or applications need to join or exchange information fro

Additionally, addresses are used as the common reference, when people or applications need to join or exchange information from different sources. This is becoming increasingly important in our joined-up high-tech world.

Better addressing thus has substantial economic and practical value and a very considerable, even if often unrecognized, importance; the European Address Forum wants to encourage the realization of its benefits, from emergency response efficiency to new value-added products and applications .