Do we need to start from the ground?
Suman Kumar Jha
Jilo Health: Making Quality Healthcare Affordable for India's "Missing Middle"
I am into Mapping industry for almost 9 months and certainly know some facts and basics of Geographic Information System. Especially about India like the only fraction of Indian population addresses are on any map. The every passing day, new technology is being created and changing people lives. Since there are so much buzz about IoT, AI, AR, VR is floating around social media, events, tech blog etc. we also thought of adopting new technology in mapping and GIS.
After few days research some of the things which I found like 3D mapping, 4D mapping, showing real-time information and incidents of corresponding cities on the map (Interactive map) etc.
I found 3D and 4D mapping interesting because it’s looking more real and also represent actual map independent from any errors.
For 3D map representation I was checking some KML files of India, ohh sorry, I don’t think I should use India because only 30% of Indian population addresses are available the on map. So, I was checking KML files of Indian cities as KML files contains tons of Lat and Long. These KML files are also with tons of lat and long but in reality, these files are 5 to 7 years old. And which leads me to some of these conclusions.
1. The map creation using these KML files represent that we are not covering the entire cities location this is the reason why various parts near Bangalore cities are still not mapped on Google map.
2. Map error, this is mainly because 7 or 5 years back the GPS accuracy was not so good (+/-25m) and that’s the reason most of the old addresses on Google map or any other map are actually wrongly located.
3. The old KML files also create confusion between old address location and new address location.
These conclusions leave a thought in my mind. Is this the reason we faced addressing and location issue every day and if this is the reason then “DO WE NEED TO START FROM GROUND“? Before building 3D map, 4D map and interactive map, should we build a very strong, error-free 2D map for the entire country?
Originally published at thesumanjha.com on May 21, 2017