What3Words is a geocoding application that uses triples of words instead of alphanumeric coordinates to identify locations. What3Words has grown rapidly in popularity over the past few years and is used in logistical applications worldwide, including by emergency services. What3Words has also attracted criticism for being less reliable than claimed, in particular that the chance of confusing one address with another is high. This paper investigates these claims and shows that the What3Words algorithm for assigning addresses to grid boxes creates many pairs of confusable addresses, some of which are quite close together. The implications of this for the use of What3Words in critical or emergency situations is discussed.

翻译：What3Words是一种地理编码应用，使用单词三元组而非字母数字坐标来标识位置。近年来，该应用迅速普及，并被全球物流应用（包括紧急服务）所采用。与此同时，What3Words也因可靠性低于声称水平而遭受批评，特别是容易混淆不同地址的问题。本文对这些质疑展开研究，论证了What3Words将地址分配给网格方块的算法会产生大量易混淆的地址对，其中部分地址空间距离较近。本文进一步探讨了该问题对关键任务或紧急情况下使用What3Words的潜在影响。