Out-of-date GPS maps

By: Drivers.com staff

Date: Wednesday, 18. August 2010

The map you got with your GPS navigation device may be as much as two years old, or much more if you haven't updated recently. That means it may not know about the newly-assigned one-way street or the cul-de-sac set up to manage traffic in a neighborhood. And it certainly isn't likely to know about construction closures or detours due to crashes.

In other words, faithfully following your GPS device directions is a very bad idea, even with very updated maps. Even map updates downloaded from the Internet may be as much as a year old, according to one mapping expert.

All the traveling around, surveying, information gathering, drawing and design that goes into traditional maps is just not good enough for the sophisticated navigation devices now coming on the market. The kind of real-time and predictive traffic information now being supplied to navigation devices demands maps that are just as real time and accurate.

And we're getting them. The key to this new world of supermapping is the same kind of "open source" approach that has led to such amazing resources as Wikipedia, Linux, Facebook, Twitter, and the "Point of Interest" info now offered by every navigation device - user input and mass participation!

Google is calling it "crowd sourcing" as it develops detailed traffic information for its Google Maps-based Phone/GPS navigation aids. Users of Google maps (and there are many) contribute information, anonymously, as their phones are tracked.

Mapping sources

Geraldine Kor, Asia-Pacific director of customer marketing for Navteq, told CNET news recently that keeping maps updated involves some 80,000 sources. In this mix she included professional cartographers and also "the input from more than 100 million users every day."

Tele Atlas Asia-Pacific director of operations Arnout Desmet listed mapping vehicles, digital cartographers, zoning boards, public safety officials, construction companies and truck drivers as participants backing up satellite and aerial photography in Tele Atlas map making.

Desmet says said updates are issued 4 times a year, aided by "tens of thousands of global sources." However, there are still inaccuracies, and there's an ongoing debate amongst map producers as to the value of user-generated, wikipedia-type input.

Defenders of "crowd-sourced" or user-generated input can point to the self-healing qualities of Wikipedia content as an example of how poor information can be corrected quickly by users with better information.

Anyone can edit Wiki content at any time, but a study of Wikipedia accuracy conducted in 2003 by IBM researchers indicated that vandalism of articles on the site is usually repaired quickly, sometimes so quickly that most users never see the bogus information.

Nevertheless, motorist on the move, needing to make on-the-spot decisions about routing, can't afford to be misled by the modern equivalent of "sign turners." Mischievous information might be not only inconvenient but unsafe.

In order to avoid misadventures of the kind cited in UK and European media in recent years navigation system users not only need to keep their maps updated but also to keep their wits about them and keep paper maps as additional references and back up aids.

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