Google to provide addresses to two million Brazilians
Google has announced a partnership with the São Paulo government to provide addresses to 340,000 rural properties based in the Brazilian state.
The Rotas Rurais project will digitally map a rural area of over 60,000 kilometers across 645 cities, impacting about 2 million people, who currently have no formal address.
According to the government, the partnership will allow citizens to register for government services and get medical attention. The project is also expected to improve policing and boost economic growth in the mapped regions with the improvement around logistics.
"The project will help the entire ecosystem in the countryside, but will also soon be applied in urban areas," said São Paulo governor João Doria, referring to slums.
"We are investing heavily in technological innovation in agribusiness, with the goal of providing producers in the state with the latest technology [advancements] in the world and, fortunately, we are succeeding," he added.
The project will use Google's Plus Codes open source technology, which converts latitude and longitude coordinates into short codes similar to zip codes. This will be incorporated into the internal government systems, which will then provide this zip code to those living in rural areas.
It is expected that the first phase of the project, which is defined as a research initiative and therefore did not involve a tendering process, will complete within six months with a database that will serve as a repository of strategic information.
The roadmap of the initiative also foresees the distribution of maps to state agencies as well as information sharing with the private sector with the aim of improving apps such as Google Maps and others.