Maps show the grid as an overlay every 1km so the position is easy to read.
There are further cases mentioned in the article from other police forces.
- South Yorkshire Police used it to find a 65-year-old man who became trapped after falling down a railway embankment in Sheffield.
- North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service found a woman who had crashed her car but was unsure where she was.
- Humberside Police were able to quickly resolve a hostage situation after the victim was able to tell officers exactly where she was being held.
If these are all completely made up, and have made it past the BBC, then I'm rather surprised.
EDIT: I think this must be the incident: https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-new...
(The report mentions a substantial search, and in particular commends the actions of good doggo PD Logan: https://twitter.com/HPDogSection/status/1103713458334416896)
Anyway, all these cases highlight the need for a much better way for emergency services to automatically receive GPS coordinates from calls - not for some wannabe rent-seeking proprietary app.
"Humberside Police also used the system to find a group of foreign nationals, including a pregnant woman in labour, who were trapped inside a shipping container at a port.
The port had over 20,000 containers and we knew that we needed to get to them quickly," said the force's control room supervisor Paul Redshaw.
The group were told to download the app and they were soon found.
There is no doubt in my mind that these incidents could have had very different outcomes had we not been able to use what3words," Mr Redshaw said."
The emergency services see something very useful here. Is there a better way to do it? Lat/Lon numbers just don't cut it.