#CompleteTheMap challenge.

While coverage in Berlin has come a long way, there are many gaps that remain. By gathering lots of imagery over a short period of time, we have the opportunity to create detailed coverage of Mitte & Kreuzberg. This facilitates a new round of map editing focused on street-level details like shop information, mobility access, and amenities.

The Challenge

A section of Berlin that overlaps Mitte and Kreuzberg has been divided into a 12x10 grid, with each zone in the grid 250x250m. To participate in the challenge, simply capture streets and paths in each zone until it turns green. The contributor with the most images in each zone will win the zone. The contributor who wins the most zone wins the first ever #CompletetheMap challenge.

If you’d like to take part, subscribe to our email updates, head into Mitte and Kreuzberg and start capturing images. Good luck!

The Rules

When The competition starts on Thursday May 25th at 0:00 UTC and ends on Thursday June 15th at 23:59 UTC.

How do I enter the challenge

Anyone capturing within the grid will automatically participate in the challenge. You don’t need to sign up anywhere.

The grid

We will be checking coverage every day and assigning a color to each zone that represents the coverage status for that area. Red will represent 33% or less of coverage, orange between 33% and 80%, and green >80%. Only images captured from day one of the competition (May 25th) will be counted.

Rankings & updates

We’ll be maintaining a live page with the results that you can visit any time here. In addition to this, we’ll be sending out daily email updates participants. You can opt in here. As usual, you’ll be able to get updates on Twitter and Facebook as well.

How to win

The winner of each zone will be the contributor with the most photos in that area when the zone goes green. The overall winner will thus be the one to collect the most zones by improving coverage in that area. The competition will end when all the zones go green or on June 15th, whichever comes sooner.

The main objective should be to cover as much new ground in a tile as possible. This means taking photos along every way in the tile, from a small footpath to a major highway.

1. We count the number of photos per tile and who has the most photos per tile.
2. When the tile is more than 80% complete (manual check), we will mark it "green". At the same time, we will be checking who has the most unique coverage at this point in time. This individual will win the tile.
3. Updates to the leaderboard will be shared every few days via email, Facebook and Twitter.

To keep the challenge as fair as possible, we will also make sure that photos taken in each zone are useful. You will not win a zone by taking 10,000 photos of your döner kebab. When deemed necessary, we’ll manually update the zone accordingly to make sure it accurately reflects the state of photo coverage in that area. You’re welcome to send in feedback to tell us which zones need to be adjusted accordingly.

Invite friends

If you would like to invite your friends to take part in the challenge, all they have to do is capture within the grid area and they will automatically earn a space on the leaderboard. If they want to stay updated, make sure they subscribe to our email updates and follow the #CompletetheMap hashtag on Facebook and Twitter. We've also started a discussion in the forum.

And we’re off!

Charge your phones, get your action cameras out, and get ready to photo map Berlin.

If you’d like to see this competition in your city, make some noise and we’ll endeavour to run the competition in your city shortly. If you can’t wait for that, we’ve also open sourced the code for the grid and leaderboard so you can set it up yourself.

Have fun exploring the city. Let’s #CompleteTheMap!

P.S. Nominate your city here if you’d like to see the challenge in your neighbourhood