A month ago we released Mapillary for Organizations to help teams work together to keep maps and geospatial datasets up to date. Since then, hundreds of organizations have already signed up to capture imagery and share map data with the world. Here are three highlights of cities and agencies using Mapillary for infrastructure maintenance, traffic sign inventory, and asset management.

Updated traffic information and transport infrastructure maintenance in Helsinki

Helsinki Regional Transport Authority needs up-to-date maps to maintain transport infrastructure and provide accurate traffic information to their customers. They are using OpenStreetMap as the main data source for everything from online route planners to printed traffic information and maps. Recently, they've started to collect Mapillary imagery to use as an additional data source for map updates.

The team has been doing a capture pilot with smartphones and tablets, and are uploading imagery to the agency’s Mapillary organization for a shared view between team members. Automatic blurring on the Mapillary platform (with 99.9% accuracy) ensures that they comply with privacy requirements. Through integrations with OpenStreetMap editing tools, fresh street-level imagery is directly available for updating the map. Additionally, it provides the chance to identify where infrastructure needs maintenance.

Going forward, Helsinki Regional Transport Authority is scoping how to put cameras on buses to get a continuous update of the routes they’re driving. They’re also hoping to use Mapillary as part of a reporting tool for citizens when they see something that needs maintenance. A longer-term goal is to use Mapillary’s automatic image detection to identify issues that require attention.

Inventorying traffic signs in Clovis

Click play to see how traffic signs are automatically detected in street-level images of the City of Clovis

The City of Clovis is conducting a traffic sign inventory in their area. Their small GIS team has many responsibilities and serves all city departments, making them particularly sensitive to costly and time-consuming solutions. The only existing street-level imagery of the town is not fit for purpose—it dates all the way back to 2007, and isn’t even available to use as a reference in GIS work.

Through Mapillary for Organizations, they are now capturing imagery of the town with smartphones. They’ve also subscribed to traffic sign data to help automate the workflow as they build their traffic sign inventory dataset. The work can be done in parallel, since the subscription enables extracting the freshest data throughout the subscription period as their team uploads new imagery.

In addition to the pilot with smartphone capture, the City of Clovis is also considering panorama capture with a 360° camera. As the Mapillary platform can handle imagery from any camera, the street-level views will be connected to each other even if they change capture equipment at some point of the project, and extracted traffic signs will be available through Mapillary for Organizations in the same manner.

Scaling up coverage and managing assets in Hillsboro

The City of Hillsboro is integrating Mapillary into their new Smart City workflows. Working with our contributor network, they scaled coverage of the city in just a week’s time, and the entire Portland region in just a month. They added a few drivers as contributors to their Mapillary organization and equipped them with smartphones. The captured imagery was uploaded to Mapillary on behalf of the City of Hillsboro, who is now integrating it into their internal tools for asset management.

The City also subscribed to traffic signs (extracted as map features). They are currently using this data to check up on their existing dataset of traffic signs. By comparing the two, they are able to identify where they may be missing the latest data and update accordingly. Moving forward from this pilot, they’re planning to share the imagery between different departments, which is easy to do by just adding more members to the organization. Also, to keep the imagery fresh after the initial capture efforts, they intend to set up some of the city’s own cars with capture equipment.

Try out Mapillary for Organizations

With visual reference and automated data extraction, Mapillary helps you keep maps and geospatial datasets updated. Try it out for your own organization by signing up and heading over to our web platform. If you’d like to discuss what we can do for you, just send us an email and we’ll get back to you shortly.

Here's to better and more detailed maps everywhere!

/Madelen