JOIN USNokia’s mapping service, renamed HERE, is launching a community mapping pilot program in India. The company said on Thursday that India is the first major country where HERE will combine its industrial data collection methods with a crowd mapping initiative.
The pilot program will be undertaken by HERE’s production team in India which currently numbers over a 1,000 people, a Nokia spokesperson told Deccan Herald.
“By balancing both its highly advanced industrial capture methods and contributions from residents of local communities, HERE will ensure that its maps consistently provide the freshest, most precise and locally relevant information,” the spokesperson said in an emailed response.
The regional HERE will work directly with local experts from more than a dozen universities around the country, such as Mount Carmel College in Bangalore and the SAL Institute of Technology in Ahmedabad.
They will use Map Creator, a HERE tool that allows people to add missing streets, bridges, points of interests (POIs) and other information to the map. Local experts will be able to share insider knowledge of the areas they know well, in turn, putting their communities on the map.
HERE has built a community map moderation system which allow its team to edit information put in by the mapping community before integrating them into the base map. Once integrated, these changes will become available within days to all users across the wide range of HERE customers, including automakers, personal navigation device manufactures, mobile device makers and web and enterprise clients.
Michael Halbherr, executive vice-president of HERE, said that in fast-growing countries like India a community mapping approach, paired with input from the right experts, can ensure that HERE’s maps don’t get obsolete. “Equally important, however, is not just the pure number of people contributing to our map-making community, but that we work with the right experts,” he said.
In smaller towns and cities, locals will help HERE build out road networks, while in densely populated areas contributors will provide information about points of interest and capture changes. HERE has already rolled out industrial capture methods in some of these areas, but local communities can further improve and humanize HERE Maps, said Neil Shah, Research Director, Counterpoint Research.
The project in India is part of an ongoing series of pilot programs that HERE is using to enhance its community mapping capabilities and tap the knowledge of local experts.
Google has been working on a similar crowd-sourced mapping system in India over the last few years and is looking to push its Street View application to generate 360-degree views of important buildings, national monuments and streets for Google Maps viewers in different Indian cities.