New Idea Monday #2 A new USA based mapping company
Now that TomTom has bought Tele Atlas and there are rumors that Google may purchase Navteq, it may be time to consider a new mapping company at least in the USA. While this isn’t a new idea in itself I beleive that my method of collection the data is. Here is how I would do it.
First I would start with Tiger Data maps supplied by the US Census Bureau. While this data is not totally accurate or complete it would offer a good basis. Then I would develop a gps/gprs device that could track and report where is was. It should run off of twelve volts and be very compact. It will report its position, heading and rate of speed back to a server through gprs. Thirdly I would offer truck drivers 0.10-0.20 cents per mile for every mile they drive with the device turned on. If you get enough truck drivers or even a trucking company to have your device on their trucks. The reported GPS tracks would then be used to “correct” the tiger and bring it in line with what the gps actually reports. As an added bonus you can use the network of devices to start collecting traffic data.
So I wonder why none of the mapping companies are already doing this……..
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October 5th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Because the hard part is getting street names right, and keeping up with changes in streets and things like that, that just having GPS traces doesn’t get you. There’s some great discussion of this at the OpenStreetMap project.
October 5th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Well if you started with a decent data set (tiger data) this becomes less of a issue no?