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Geoinformatics-8-2009
interview navteq on new trends in navigation you have reached your destination! google maps and microsoft bing maps regularly promote their map updates in connection with countries that host football s mega-events. so it is not surprising that navteq, one of the world's leading companies in the field of location-based mapping, is following suit. it recently presented a brand-new pedestrian navigation product for johannesburg, one of the host cities for the 2010 fifa world cup south africa. navteq discover cities contains navigation information for pedestrians in some 100 cities around the world and shows that navigation is still a very dynamic and expanding market segment. earlier this year florian fischer talked with oliver marc schatzle from navteq about recent trends in mapping and navigation. by florian fischer you have reached your destination almost. in many cases car navigation systems just direct drivers to places close to their destination such as a place to park. then the real journey starts, as many pedestrian destinations are not properly mapped at all. though navigation systems are mostly mobile devices, a true pedestrian guide needs to provide specific geo-information different from car navigation data. for pedestrians it is important to know about footbridges, pedestrian crossing areas and pedestrian lights, while one-way streets are no obstacle for them, unlike for car drivers. detailed information about city centers and their pedestrian zones becomes important. specific points of interest can be valuable as was the case with public viewing areas during the 2006 world cup. similarly, trucking makes specific demands on navigation data. problems caused by truck drivers using normal car navigation systems are increasing, and customized maps are urgently needed to alert truck drivers to dangers. navteq can provide data about height and load limits of bridges, special parking, and the location of washing plants for trucks. oliver marc schatzle, marketing manager emea for navteq germany local stakeholders provide local knowledge in germany navteq maintains nine offices that are responsible for geo-research and for establishing bilateral communication with local stakeholders. the on-site staff know the key contact people in administrative departments so they can get timely information about changes in streets, road signs, points of interest and land use. none of navteq s competitors has established this kind of decentralized infrastructure for gathering information. these georesearchers are responsible for the whole information chain from data acquisition to data input. geo-research is not a trivial matter. the information that is being gathered is continually increasing in complexity and quantity. navteq employs graduates with research skills who pound the streets to gather geographic information and input their data into the navteq database. a map interface. a team at navteq sorts them and does a rough verification and relevancy assessment. then they forward the requests to one of the local research teams. open-data projects like openstreetmap (osm) come with ever increasing data richness and quality, driven by their community and free of cost. will they be competitors to navteq or even replace its costly mapping products? oliver marc schatzle considers osm s database to be good quality but, they are not a professional challenge . while navteq meets the professional challenge, can manage deadlines for customers, and offers worldwide coverage, osm is considered to have a leisure-time character . doubtless there is some truth in this depiction as osm data is generated by a crowd of volunteers who gather geographic data in their leisure time. and it might be exactly this leisuretime orientation that makes osm data so valuable in the context of leisure-time activities, which represents a significant potential market for geographic information. more demand for individual geoinformation finally, oliver marc schatzle believes there is a growing demand for geographic information, especially within the consumer domain, one of navteq s three organizational units. content will increase in richness and more information will be required as personal preferences become more and more diverse, he argues. in the leisure and tourism industries the importance of geo-information in providing advice to consumers has strengthened in recent years. the who , what , and how counts very much for everyday activities. geo-information can provide valuable advice for consumers and december 2009 open data a foresight in the glass-sphere volunteered geographic information, a form of collecting geo-information from users, is an interesting option for navteq as geo-research is very cost-intensive. similar to its competitors, navteq offers map reporter to its customers in order to let them propose corrections to map data. all incoming proposals are prompted via 14
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