Mountain Rescue England and Wales (MREW) has questioned the accuracy of location sharing application what3words.

The platform divides the world into three metre squares and gives each square a unique combination of three words to help users find and share exact locations.

The free app is used by 85 per cent of UK emergency services.

But Mountain Rescue shared a database from the past 12 months with the BBC, which revealed 45 incorrect locations across England and Wales which had been received by rescuers from either injured or lost walkers.

Examples of errors included:
• jump.legend.warblers which was in Vietnam
• duties.factory.person was located in China
• dignitary.fake.view turned out to be in India
• refuse.housework.housebound was in Australia
• middle.plugged.nourished was in the US
• demand.heave.surprise was actually in Canada
• flesh.unzip.whirlwind was in Russia

"It's a tool, and a tool is better than no tool, but people are being sent to the wrong location," Mark Lewis, head of ICT at MREW, told the BBC. “We are finding there are a lot of spelling issues, which might be from when locations are given to the emergency services. Local accents have also been a problem."

what3words told the BBC that human error was a possibility with any kind of tool.
"We regularly check in with the emergency services that use the system to receive feedback,” the company said. “The overwhelming response is positive, and, time and time again we have been humbled to see stories where our technology has turned out to be life-saving.

It added: "In terms of misheard or misspelt words, our system is designed to try and minimise this as much as possible."

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