Introduction
Since we could not find any online documentation for writing proper address information in the Philippines, we decided to create one.
In coming up with this protocol, we had to consider a number of issues, like not having specific house numbers; inconsistent conventions; poorly sourced conventional wisdom ; living in the provinces and generally not knowing your own barangay or postal code and let us not forget to add “not having visible street signs”.
So for lack any government guidance here it is.
Protocol
<Addressee>
<Unit No> < Building Name> or <Lot No / Block No>
<House No> <Street Name>
<Village/Subdivision> or <Postal Code Name> or <Purok Name>
<Barangay Name> < Postal Code> <City/Municipality Name>
<Province>, <Country>
The protocol starts in reverse order with the largest parcel which is the country, followed by smaller parcels city, municipality and so on, In effect drilling down to a specific location.
Some Examples
| Building Based Address
Juan Dela Cruz |
Village Based Address
Juan Dela Cruz |
| Provincial Address
Juan Dela Cruz |
Village Based Address (Lot Block)
Juan Dela Cruz |
The Odd Balls
<Purok>
No one quite knows whether this is a political block or a geographical block? But it seems in the provinces purok is a way to find a person’s location.
<Postal Code Name>
The Philippine postal office attaches description(s) or name(s) to a postal code.
The conventions are confusing, it is not a barangay. It does seem to be a village name (e.g. Merville, Greenhills) or a popular locality name (e.g. Binondo, Malate) when in metro manila, and it takes the municipality name when outside of Metro Manila.
This might be because of population size considerations however it causes location finding issues when used for large municipalities such as Davao City which carries a single postal code of 8000. It may be that the postal office is extremely slow to react (similar to their mail services) to population changes, hence Davao with a population of more than a million is still a single postal code.
<Lot No / Block No>
This is the most annoying of all, we cannot route to a location with this information! It is impossible to do with Navigation Software. If we understand this correctly, this identifier is meant to be used by property developers to sell lots.
Process Ownership
If anyone from the Philippine Government reads this kindly send us an email and tell us who is supposed to be responsible for assigning addresses and postal codes?
We might even help you do this pro-bono.
Perspective GIS and Perspective Mobile are products of Paperless Trail Inc.
Paperless Trail Inc (PTI) is a Philippine based system integrator and applications developer specializing in fields such as digital mapping, GIS/GPS applications, document management and document imaging.