This chapter summarizes the addressing system policy of the National Addressing System element by element. An Addressing System Policy is a framework defining the rules for creating, managing, and using official addresses to ensure consistency, accuracy, and usability for stakeholders like government agencies, businesses, and residents.

The National Addressing System for the Sultanate of Oman will enable efficient location of delivery points for people, goods and services using a simple address format:

[Recipient name]
[Address unit number], [Street name], [Sub address]
[Optional second address line, see examples for usage guidance]
[Administrative validity area = wilayat, governorate]
[Country = Sultanate of Oman]

If the wilayat and governorate name is the same, as is the case for the wilayat/governorate Muscat and the wilayat/governorate Al Buraymi, the name is included only once.

Table 2. Example address for detached villa in al Hamra

The simplest address format, omitting any conditional and optional elements

Table 3. Example address for building in Kumzar accessible only from informal track

Here, addresses are allocated within an imagined sub-division of Kumzar village in Musandam. In this case, no street exists, and an area name takes the place of the street name in the address. Addressable objects are assigned unique numbers within the area.

Table 4. Example address for apartment in the Hay Matar Bait Al Falaj in Wilayat Mutrah

In this example for an imagined apartment in Hay Matar Bait Al Falaj, note that the second address line is used to include the optional area name, picked from the formal destination hierarchy. Also note that the administrative validity area is given as Muscat in place of the wilayat name that is Mutrah.

Table 5. Example address for apartment in a named multi-storey building in Sohar

Note that the apartment number is for an imagined building with an imagined name with less than 10 floors but more than 9 units per floor. Therefore, two numbers are reserved for the unit number whereas one is used for the floor number, i.e. floor number 2, unit number 1 = 201.

Note that the optional address line is used to include the building name as well as one element from the destination hierarchy, municipal area (aka hay). When the second address line includes more than one element, names are listed in the order of smallest to largest.

Table 6. Example address for detached Villa in Wilayat Al Buraymi

Note that the administrative validity area includes Al Buraymi only once, as the name of the wilayat is the same as the name of the Governorate.

The Sultanate of Oman is divided into 11 governorates that are further divided into 63 wilayat. The administrative validity area of the addressing system will be the wilayat.

Wilayat are further subdivided into smaller areas according to different methodologies, out of these, the following will have consequence for addressing:

• Town boundaries: The National Centre for Statistics and Information has town boundaries that provide a named polygon for any built-up area in the Sultanate of Oman.

• Municipal areas (aka districts): Sohar, Muscat and Dhofar municipalities have municipal areas that provide named areas within wilayat.

• Hellat (aka communities, neighbourhoods): These exist all over the country but are not named everywhere. Where Hellat merely have numbers and serve only as statistical groupings, they may be considered irrelevant for addressing. Where they carry names, they must be considered for local way-finding signage and street naming purposes.

These area types and names will be used to define the destination hierarchy of the National Addressing System.

Currently Oman Post do not have a location-based post code system available for the Sultanate of Oman. Hence, it will not be part of the National Addressing System at the outset. If in future they a post code is defined, it will be added to the written address at time.

Two codes will be assigned to all addresses based on a location coding system that translates geographical coordinates into compact, easy to recite alphanumeric strings of less than 8-10 characters length.

The codes will be assigned based on the Mapcode³ and OpenLocationCode⁴ (plus code) location coding systems.

The road network consists of line segments that are consolidated into continuous streets with a unified direction and numbering of address units.

Streets are created (implicitly) as part of the property planning process in the Ministry of Housing for residential streets as well as through master planning by the Ministry of Transport and the municipalities for intermediate and major roads.

Streets can be named by either unique names (preferred) or a unique combination of name and a numeric suffix. For detailed rules, see chapter ‎6 below.

Addresses are assigned to all delivery locations for people, goods and services such as gates in permanent walls, buildings, single buildings or building entrances in the event of large, functionally divided buildings.

Address units are numbered from the start to the end of a street with odd number on the left, even numbers on the right. When there are one or more unbuilt plots or stretches along a road with no buildings, numbers are reserved for so that new constructions can be assigned numbers without breaking the sequence.

If there is more than one building within one address unit interval, they must be subdivided by English letters a—h. Sub-division further than to eight units should be avoided as far as possible.

For buildings on street corners, a number must be reserved for both streets. The official address of the building shall be to the street from which it has its main entrance.

Single buildings or properties with a long driveway leading off a rural road must be numbered to the road they are accessed from with a directional sign at the exit.

In order to ensure that any legal references to old address units are traceable, the old address should be retained in the database linked to each address unit number.

For detailed rules, see chapter ‎6 below.

Sub addresses must be assigned to units inside buildings such as apartments, offices, shops, suites etc.

Building owners are responsible for sub-addressing. Existing sub-addresses may be retained for the present but should be changed over a time-period of 5-10 years. The enforcement of renumbering must be linked to processes that require interaction between owners/operators of multi-unit buildings and the government. Two obvious processes are the renewal of commercial licenses and the renewal and registration of tenancy contracts. Other processes may be envisaged.

In order to ensure that any legal references to old sub addresses are traceable, the old sub address should be retained in the database linked to each renumbered unit.

For new developments, sub addresses must be determined as follows:

• Floors must be numbered according to a standard list of floor numbers

• Units on a floor must be numbered clockwise starting from either (a) the stairwell and/or elevator shaft or (b) upper left corner of the building drawing.

• Units must be named according to a standard list of unit types

Example: The third apartment unit located on the fourth floor of a building with less than ten floors will be identified as: Apartment 403

Proposed amendment

• The above rules should be used for numbering units inside multi-unit buildings, such as residential towers
• When adding sub addresses for secondary entrances in a building that have direct access from street level, the numbering should start from the main entrance
• The numbering should increase with the numbering direction of the street the parent address unit is associated with
• For the main entrance an address unit number plate should be fixed
• For the sub addresses, a sub address number plate should be fixed
• If it is impossible to determine the location of the main entrance by looking at the building, the point should be placed at corner of the building that is closest to the starting point of the street on the frontage facing that street.

During the lifetime of the National Addressing System (NAS) project, a national-level committee is established to collect appropriate names for streets. This committee consists of representatives from the project owner and relevant stakeholders at ministerial/state, governorate, and municipal levels.

The committee compiles a database of street names that are systematically transliterated or Romanized into English letters. This database is then provided to local naming committees, operating within municipal councils across all wilayat in the Sultanate of Oman.

Local naming committees allocate street names from this database within their jurisdiction, ensuring compliance with established rules regarding repetition and proximity of names between wilayat. While local committees may propose additional names, these must be accurately provided in Arabic and submitted to the National Survey Authority (NSA) for transliteration or Romanization and inclusion in the shared national database. Before allocating a name to any street, the national database must be consulted to verify if the name is already in use, and if so, in which location(s).

The Ministry of Interior (MoI) oversees the approval of street names at governorate and wilayat levels. Naming for national roads follows the existing procedures managed by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT).

Street names may be repeated across non-adjacent administrative areas (wilayat). However, adjacent wilayat are prohibited from using the same street names. For example, neighbouring wilayat such as Barka and As Seeb cannot have streets with identical names, whereas non-adjacent wilayat such as Sohar and Mutrah may share street names.

Given that the metropolitan area of Muscat, comprising the wilayat of Muscat, Mutrah, Bosher, and As Seeb, is commonly referred to collectively as “Muscat”, street names must not be repeated among these four wilayat.

Street name designators are currently translated rather than transliterated. For example, the Arabic word شارع (sharaa) is translated directly to “street” in English rather than transliterated.

Directional signs must show areas reachable at exits from arterial and collector roads.

Street name signs must show the name of streets at the starting points of the street as well as at key intersections along the street.

Street name reminder signs may be placed at varying intervals along longer roads and streets.

Building number plates shall show the address unit number assigned to gates, buildings and/or entrances along the streets.

Sub address plates must show the number of units inside buildings and is the responsibility of the building owner.

The design of the addressing system emphasizes simplicity and logic to ease the learning curve of the system.

While the main objective of the addressing system is to provide quick, accurate locations, the system must also help users getting to their desired destinations.

In support of signage, the most important way-finding measures will be printed maps and atlases as well as addressing data available for searching in car navigation systems as well as on smart phones.

In order to operate the addressing system, it is necessary to establish a set of business processes which guides the activities of planning, naming, allocating, implementing and disseminating addressing information.

Addressing data are created and maintained by the municipalities. Complete and integrated data for the entire country must be kept updated and available through a central database hosted by the national spatial data infrastructure.

The data management processes cover all the steps of the address data life cycle:

• The life-cycle of an address is initiated at the time of planning properties and road layouts for any new development area. The structure of parcels implies the future layout of addressable objects and local access.
• Planning and development are done by different actors on different levels. Address data must be created at planning time by the municipal addressing section that observes and receives notification of new activity from planning entities.
• Once a land-owner applies for a construction permit, a planned address is allocated to the construction, and the address becomes an as-built address.
• Once a building is demolished or a street or city part is redeveloped existing addresses either revert to planned or are archived as historical with an end-date.
• If an existing building is torn down and two new buildings are put in its place, the old address may be split using letters (a, b, c) or previously reserved numbers, if the replaced structure occupied a space greater than the address unit resolution.

From the central database, addresses are made available to government sector stakeholders and private sector licensees through a web service infrastructure which enables complete or partial download of addressing data for synchronization with external systems.

Addressing data are actively disseminated to private sector value-added service providers such as data providers for car navigation systems and map/travel atlas publishers.