Every Mapper knows that nothing beats Field Mapping in terms of perfection and of course, the sheer joy of mapping. Having a notepad, pen, gps and walking along the streets, marking every detail will give you a clear picture of that particular area and about your observation skills in noticing tiny details about what makes that particular street, colony or area, tick! Field mapping gives you first hand insight about the features in that particular place, what kind of streets are there, how the colony is built etc…

This time I had a taste of the first city based field mapping when I got to roam around streets of Indiranagar, trying to see what interests the people in that area, what are the new point of interests, what new restaurants and cafes have popped up, where are the atms and banks, how new buildings are shaping up, are there any important points missing from the maps?

Today’s task had us, a team of three: Maning, Chetan, Poorni covering a stretch of around 2 kilometers around the Krishna Temple Road of Indiranagar, across the 100 feet road, to see what new POI’s need to be added to the map, what new buldings might have come up since the time it was previously mapped, are there any shops or amenities that were previously there but not functionable anymore.

The tools that we used were OSM Tracker, OSM AND and Mapillary. As we were three people, we each used one tool to get the bearing of the task and update as much as we could. We used field papers to note down the points. By the time we were done, the field papers were messy and we were happy with the mapping that had been done!

Field Mapping is crucial because the insight that you get is something missing from mapping remotely and as the city grows every single day, there are new things coming up, old stuff crashing down. It is crucial to map all the features because everybody needs an updated map to stay in sync with the fast moving world out there! The data points you updated will most certainly help someone whether they are looking for a bite late night or trying to find an atm or a pharmacy in times of an emergency or while trying to route the fastest way to their work place.

This is how the neighbourhood changed quickly on OpenStreetMap as we went on updating data points! credits: PlaneMad

Because if adding data remotely is a task then field mapping is the validation!

So grab your notepad, pens and gps and go out there and map!

Happy Mapping :)