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European POI Collection | Close |
NAVTEQ set out to expand and verify the Points of Interest in 52 European cities, home to 10 million people. But most of the POIs are in crowded city centers that are more efficiently reached on foot. So we loaded PDAs with our proprietary data collection software and GPS technology. Then NAVTEQ geographic analysts, including Raffaela Brambilla, used the PDAs to collect and verify the POIs.
In the summer and early fall of 2006, Raffaela, armed with a map of her specific assignment, walked the streets, alleys, and piazzas of downtown areas in Italy. As she confirmed and recorded the precise locations of POIs that ranged from stores and restaurants to hospitals and fuel stations, other geographic analysts, working from NAVTEQ offices throughout Europe, were doing the same.
Once she returned to her field office in Rome, Raffaela used the field-collected data to update the NAVTEQ map. The other field teams assigned to this extensive project did the same. Specially trained internal data collectors expanded the scope of the effort; they verified, by phone, the locations of thousands of other POIs.
By September, we had updated the information on 13,000 POIs and added 20,000 new POIs. Which led to an even fresher, more-detailed NAVTEQ map. And some much-deserved vacation time for Raffaela and her coworkers.
