Nokia HERE’s Community Mapping Program in India

HERE, a Nokia business, announced Thursday that it is launching a community mapping pilot program in India, the first major country where HERE will combine its industrial data collection methods with a crowd mapping initiative.

By balancing both its industrial capture methods and contributions from residents of local communities, HERE takes a best-of-both-worlds approach to ensuring that its maps consistently provide the freshest, most precise and locally relevant information, says Nokia.

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With a team of more than 1,000 people in India, the regional HERE will work directly with handpicked 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.

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Using Map Creator, a HERE tool that allows people to add missing streets, bridges, points of interests (POIs) and other information to the map, these local experts can share insider knowledge of the areas they know like the back of their hand and, in turn, put their communities on the map.

To maintain accuracy and ensure map quality, HERE has built a community map moderation system that allows both HERE team as well as the community at large to verify edits before integrating them into the base map.

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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.

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.

HERE, a Nokia business, offers maps and location experiences across multiple screens and operating systems.