In Anatomy of an Indian Address, Gowri N Kishore takes a deep dive into how civic addressing works in India:

India has no standardised way of describing addresses as Western countries do. And a one-size-fits-all approach may not even work here because different states have their own terms like street, main/cross, colony, and more. Each address is its own little adventure. Phew!

One of the under-appreciated public works megaprojects here on Prince Edward Island is the civic addressing system: introduced in the early 2000s, the system was designed to enable the introduction of 911 emergency service in a province that, outside of larger cities and towns, had no standardized address system. From the original Civic Address Standards and Guidelines:

The civic address standards outlined ensure that all residences on Prince Edward Island are universally and uniquely civic addressed. The civic address guidelines present recommended rules to follow when providing new civic addresses. The document also describes situations where undesirable (unacceptable) civic addressing may exist and recommends possible remedies.

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The present status of civic addressing within Prince Edward Island can be summarized as follows:

• Both Charlottetown and Summerside are essentially complete;
• Five of seven towns are essentially complete;
• Three of fifteen communities with official plans are essentially complete;
• All other areas within PEI are minimally or non civic addressed.

I was under contract to the Province of PEI throughout this process, and was privileged to witness, up close, what a Herculean task it was to find a unique civic address for every property on the Island: not only did addresses themselves need to be assigned, but road names needed to be established (and made unique within a county), and, in many cases, new “civic address communities” established, as much of the province isn’t covered by formal municipalities.

The civic address system was one of the signature achievements of former Provincial Tax Commissioner Jim Ramsay: while the process involved many people across departments and agencies, inside government and out, it was Jim who was the driving force. And that the data underlying the system — a geolocated civic address database — was made freely available to the public is a testament to Jim’s ability to see the tremendous upsides of such a move (I was in the room when the decision to do this was made, and the page offering the data was online the same day — there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to see such a resource be made public, and wan’t to ensure the horses were out of the barn before any layer of the bureaucracy changed its mind).