The island’s chief fire officer says he will consider adopting a new communicating location app that is already claimed to have saved lives elsewhere.

Skin.using.spit may appear like three random words but in fact they precisely identify the exact location of Douglas fire station on Peel Road.

The brainchild of music events organiser Chris Sheldrick, what3words is a smartphone app that has gone viral. And it has already made its mark.

When Jess Tinsley and her friends got lost in a forest in County Durham on a dark, wet night, they finally managed after three hours to find a spot with phone signal and dialled 999.

The call-handler told them to download the what3words app. It came up with the three words kicked.converged.soccer.

With those apparently random words, police knew exactly where the lost walkers were and they were swiftly found by the Teesdale and Weardale Search and Mountain Rescue Team.

Emergency services in the UK are urging everyone to download the what3words app. And the island’s chief fire officer Kevin Groom has certainly not ruled it out.

He said: ’We do not use it currently but it is certainly something we can look into further.’

So how does what3words work?

Each 3m square in the world has been assigned a unique three-word address that will never change. People use it to find their tents at festivals, navigate to B&Bs, and to direct emergency services to the right place.

Chris Sheldrick’s vision is for it to become a global standard for communicating location.

Working in the music industry, he quickly discovered that people struggle with poor addressing every day. Getting lost trying to find events was common.

In Italy, a driver unloaded all the equipment an hour north of Rome, instead of an hour south. Then there was the day when a keyboard player called him to say he had just sound-checked at the wrong wedding.

To get people and equipment to the right places - and on time - he tried sharing GPS co-ordinates instead.

But asking people to meet at the likes of 40.7127753, -74.0059728 was just too unreliable. Entering 16 numbers into a device, or even sharing them over a phone call, can easily go wrong.

Chris sat down with his mathematician school friend, Mohan Ganesalingam, to find a way to describe location that would be as precise as GPS co-ordinates, but more concise and easier for people to use.

Before long, Mohan created the first three-word address algorithm on the back of an envelope. Chris and Mohan contacted another friend from school, Jack Waley-Cohen, who has a background in translation - and what3words was born.

That was five years ago. Today millions across the world are using the app to find and describe places faster and more easily - from festival-goers and travellers to delivery drivers, event organisers and postal services.

We tested the app on the locations of some well-known Manx landmarks and found some unexpectedly appropriate three words for them.