Google Map Maker on Campus

As part of the recent US Map Maker launch, the Map Maker Community team has begun a series of campus visits across the US.

Our first stop was the University of California at Berkeley, where we gave students and faculty a chance to learn about Google Map Maker and work with Map Maker team members in person to map their campus.


Even though the map of Berkeley and the UC Berkeley Campus on Google Maps were already well mapped, students still identified many opportunities to add their local knowledge to the map. Edits included moving location markers, tracing building boundaries, and adding names of campus dorms. The Google Map Maker community team was on site to guide these new mappers and note their thoughtful feedback.


Participants were excited about making corrections and contributions to the map in their area, particularly the U.C. Berkeley campus, and seeing the edits they made appear on the monitor that had been set up on the big screen at the front of the room to show real-time mapping.

Everyone has local knowledge they can add to the map. Help us make your school look even better! Check out your college campus at mapmaker.google.com and leave your mark on the map by drawing walking paths, adding details to your school's buildings, and more.

For more information on how to get started and to connect with other mappers, check out the Google Map Maker community forum. You can also reach out to the Map Maker community team at mapping@google.com.

Happy Mapping!

Posted by Andrew Kornblatt, Map Maker Community Team

Using the power of mapping to support South Sudan

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

Last Thursday, the Google Map Maker team, along with the World Bank and UNITAR/UNOSAT, held a unique event at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and a satellite event in Nairobi at the same time. More than 70 members of the Sudanese diaspora, along with regional experts from the World Bank, Sudan Institute, Voices for Sudan, The Enough Project and other organizations gathered together to map what is expected to become the world’s newest country later this year: the Republic of South Sudan. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the international community “to assist all Sudanese towards greater stability and development” during and beyond this period of transition.

South Sudan is a large but under-mapped region, and there are very few high-quality maps that display essential features like roads, hospitals and schools. Up-to-date maps are particularly important to humanitarian aid groups, as they help responders target their efforts and mobilize their resources of equipment, personnel and supplies. More generally, maps are an important foundation for the development of the infrastructure and economy of the country and region.

The Map Maker community—a wide-ranging group of volunteers that help build more comprehensive maps of the world using our online mapping tool, Google Map Maker—has been contributing to the mapping effort for Sudan since the referendum on January 9. To aid their work, we’ve published updated satellite imagery of the region, covering 125,000 square kilometers and 40 percent of the U.N.’s priority areas, to Google Earth and Maps.

The goal of last week’s event was to engage and train members of the Sudanese diaspora in the United States, and others who have lived and worked in the region, to use Google Map Maker so they could contribute their local knowledge of the region to the ongoing mapping effort, particularly in the area of social infrastructure. Our hope is that this event and others like it will help build a self-sufficient mapping community that will contribute their local expertise and remain engaged in Sudan over time.

We were inspired by the group’s enthusiasm. One attendee told us: “I used to live in this small village that before today did not exist on any maps that I know of...a place unknown to the world. Now I can show to my kids, my friends, my community, where I used to live and better tell the story of my people.”

The group worked together to make several hundred edits to the map of Sudan in four hours. As those edits are approved, they’ll appear live in Google Maps, available for all the world to see. But this wasn’t just a one-day undertaking—attendees will now return to their home communities armed with new tools and ready to teach their friends and family how to join the effort. We look forward to seeing the Southern Sudanese mapping community grow and flourish.

Posted by France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org

Celebrating top Geo contributors in the Asia Pacific region

In countries like India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Kazakhstan, a community of passionate users is helping to bring geographic content online—in many cases for the first time. Using products like Google Map Maker, Google SketchUp & Building Maker, and Panoramio, these users are adding geographic information for millions of users to explore in Google Maps and Google Earth.

Recently some of the most active Map Maker mappers, 3D modelers and Panoramio photo contributors from around the region gathered in Singapore to attend the first ever Asia Pacific regional Geo Community Summit.

Map Maker Software Engineer Robin Anil answers questions during a Q & A session.

The summit celebrated top mappers, modelers and photo contributors by asking individuals to tell their stories, brainstorm potential new product features directly with Google engineers during the unconference sessions, as well as make plans for events in the forthcoming year. We learned that India mapper CNR wakes up at 4:30am every morning to map. Pakistan mappers Faraz, Jabran and Omer worked together over the course of two years to map the roads of their country. They even turned Google Calendar into a way to track who was mapping what, and when! Thanks to the efforts of Map Maker contributors throughout the Asia Pacific region, more than a quarter of a billion people now have detailed online maps of the places they live.

Unconference session discussions

To learn more about this recent summit, you check out photos and videos or see detailed session notes and presentations on the event website page. If you’re interested in attending future events, please see the Map Maker Events Calendar, 3D Events Calendar, and Panoramio Events Calendar for upcoming activities. We look forward to celebrating more great achievements from our community of mappers, modelers, and photo contributors in the region.

Posted by Jessica Pfund, Program Manager, Google Map Maker

Reflecting the ever-changing world around us

Yesterday we opened the map of the United States in Google Map Maker, enabling you to add your local knowledge of the U.S. to Google Maps. With this addition, the maps of 187 countries and regions—including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands—are now available for editing by users to improve freshness and detail.

These edits are often visible immediately on Map Maker, but aren’t seen by most users until they’re published on Google Maps. In the past we would process edits in large groups, which meant it could take weeks before approved edits appeared on Google Maps. In preparation for yesterday’s launch, we recently added a new publishing system to reflect Map Maker user contributions on Google Maps more quickly. Once a Map Maker edit has been approved, it will now appear on Google Maps within minutes.

You often have the latest information about changes that occur in the places where you live and work. If a new coffee shop opens along your way to work, or you discover a tennis court nearby, you can add to or update the map and help other users find those spots just minutes after your edit is approved.

Map before user contributions

Map after user contributions, showing tennis courts in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

With our new publishing system and the efforts of the Map Maker community, we’re working together to make Google Maps a more detailed, up-to-date reflection of the world around us. You can see the results of these efforts through real-time edits by users around the world at mapmaker.google.com/pulse. To add your local knowledge, learn more or get started mapping at mapmaker.google.com.

Posted by Jamie Zyskowski, Software Engineer, Google Maps and Chandan Shanbhag, Software Engineer, Google Map Maker

Add your local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker for the United States

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

Before Google Map Maker—a product that enables people to add to and update the map for locations around the world—only 15 percent of the world’s population had detailed online maps of their neighborhoods. Using Map Maker, people have built out and edited the maps for 183 countries and regions around the world, and now, due to the contributions of citizen cartographers, 30 percent of people have detailed online maps of the places they live.

Map Maker users have mapped entire cities, road networks and universities that were never previously recorded online. These contributions have been incorporated into Google Maps and Google Earth, so the collective expertise of the Map Maker community benefits the millions of people using these products globally.

Today we’re opening the map of the United States in Google Map Maker for you to add your expert local knowledge directly. You know your neighborhood or hometown best, and with Google Map Maker you can ensure the places you care about are richly represented on the map. For example, you can fix the name of your local pizza parlor, or add a description of your favorite book store.

You can help make the map complete in other ways as well, such as marking the bike lanes in your town or adding all of the buildings on your university campus so they appear in Google Maps. We’ve seen incredibly detailed contributions from power users worldwide, including this comprehensive map of IIT Bombay. We’re eager to see you add the same level of detail to locations in the United States.

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

To confirm Map Maker user contributions are accurate, each edit will be reviewed. After approval, the edits will appear in Google Maps within minutes—dramatically speeding up the time it takes for online maps to reflect the often-changing physical world. To see examples of what people around the world are adding to Map Maker, you can watch mapping in real-time.

In addition to opening Map Maker for the United States, we’ve added some new features for users globally. You can now get a street-level perspective on places with Street View imagery directly in Map Maker, see and edit all points of interest, and find exactly what you’re looking for with advanced search options such as displaying all railroad tracks.

Browsing all points of interest in downtown Palo Alto, California

To learn more, check out our getting started site, or start mapping now at mapmaker.google.com.

Posted by Lalitesh Katragadda, Tech Lead and Manik Gupta, Product Manager, Google Map Maker

Meet the Map Maker Advocates

Today, we’re proud to introduce you to our Google Map Maker Advocates! Google Map Maker is an online tool that enables individuals to add detailed information to the maps of many countries and regions for everyone to view and use in Google Maps. Having a healthy community of people contributing their local knowledge to the maps is essential, and these nearly 50 mappers representing regions from around the world have earned the status of “Map Maker Advocate” for the year 2011. They’ve made an impressive number of contributions to the map, as well as demonstrated community leadership by organizing mapping events and actively participating on our Map Your World discussion forums throughout the past year.

Map Maker Advocates Zohir (Morocco), Momodou (West Africa), and Jabran (Pakistan) 
at the Africa Super Mappers Conference

As part of this year-long volunteer opportunity, Map Maker Advocates will be heavily involved in Map Maker events hosted by Google and are also excited to host their own mapping events sponsored by Google. These are the mentors of the Map Maker community, well versed in the technical aspects of the product as well as local experts for their region of the world.

You can discuss mapping with them on our Map Your World discussion forums, directly through the Map Maker Advocates page, or look for their upcoming events on the Map Maker Community Events calendar. We encourage you to try out Google Map Maker today and thank our Map Maker Advocates for their continued enthusiasm and support of our growing mapping community.

Posted by Jessica Pfund, Program Manager, Google Map Maker

New Maps domains in 11 countries in Middle East & North Africa

[Cross-posted from the Google Arabia Blog - in Arabic]

With the growing numbers of Internet users in the region, we noticed that a huge number of search queries have a geographic component. So, we’ve been working on providing rich, local geographic data to offer you the best local experience possible and today we are announcing the launch of local Google Maps domains for 11 countries across the region.

Now, Google Maps will be easily accessible from your local search domain in Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. You’ll also be able to use it in Arabic as well as English and French for some countries. You can use Google Maps to search for a city, navigate your way around towns, or find a local business. This could be a Falafel place in Amman, a hotel in Cairo, or a restaurant in Jeddah.

Having access to maps on your local domain is more than just finding your way from A to B. There are many ways that businesses and individuals can contribute to making Google Maps in your country more useful and more accurate. Check out some of the following features:

Use My Maps to create your own personalized maps, for example a customized map of your favourite places in your neighborhood to share your experiences with others.

Maps in Algeria, Libya, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar have been made possible in large part by passionate users mapping their countries via Google Map Maker, which is available across the world in more than 180 countries and regions. Map Maker allows you to use your local knowledge to practically edit the entire map - from roads, businesses, parks, schools and more. Users have mapped out entire countries or just made their neighborhoods look stunning. Starting today Google Map Maker is now launched in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

It is also possible to include a Google map on your own website. You can display information - like a restaurant location or directions - on a Google map and embed it in your website using our Google Maps API. There are many great sites already using the API to share customized information on Google maps. For the developers and webmasters amongst you, the possibilities are endless.

Happy mapping!

Posted by AbdelKarim Mardini, Product Manager, Middle East & North Africa

Women get together to map Kenya

[Cross-posted on the Google Africa Blog]

Many people enjoy using Google Maps to locate and learn about places around the world. Others, however, relish taking a more active role: improving Google Maps by adding and editing roads, parks, businesses, and more through Google Map Maker. In some cases, these citizen mappers take a day to collaboratively focus on a specific area, as more than 60 women did recently in Nairobi, Kenya. Together, they planned a “Ladies Mapping Party,” with the goal of empowering and inspiring a broad array of women to give back to their communities through mapping. From advocates to non-profit leaders, students to computer scientists, environmentalists to editors, these women mapped the places they live and love, know and often visit.

The event began with a short training and demo session during which participants received an overview of Google Map Maker, followed by a competition to spur the groups on to map their communities.

Training and demo session

One of the groups was comprised of three dynamic students from Strathmore University - Betsy, Issene and Yasmin. Within 30 minutes, they had mapped most of the points of interest in their home town, Isiolo, while the broader group of women worked together on Juja, Ongata Rongai and Nyahururu.

This strategy of targeted specific regions in Africa seemed to work well for the attendees. “We decided to map Isiolo because we know the area well, and the area had very few points that were mapped compared to other areas like Nairobi,” noted one of the students, who also joked that the prizes - including Google-branded bags - further encouraged them to map so comprehensively.

Issene, Betsy and Yasmin: contributors at the event

Many of the participants mentioned that they’re eager to continue using Map Maker, citing it as “a new pastime.” But the women took away more than just mapping knowledge, with one of the mappers noting that the group “learned from the others that doing what you love is the key to success.”

Interested in mapping your part of the world?  Give Google Map Maker a try.

Posted by Jacqueline Rajuai, GIS Specialist, Google Kenya

Act Locally in Sudan with New Imagery & Maps

After years of conflict, Southern Sudan overwhelmingly opted to secede from the country's north. Many challenges lie ahead as the newly independent state negotiates the rocky path towards independence. We believe that access to high-quality, up-to-date and locally relevant maps will assist humanitarian organizations working in the region.

We are encouraging users to add their local knowledge to this mapping effort through a campaign to build a better map of Sudan. Recent satellite imagery is key to building up-to-date maps, and we are continuously acquiring fresh and historical imagery of Sudan. Our latest imagery update is now live on Google Map Maker, Google Earth, and Google Maps, with nearly fifty percent of the UN priority areas over Southern Sudan covered with high resolution imagery. Thanks to our satellite partner GeoEye, we will continue to acquire and publish high resolution imagery of the remaining UN priority areas, as well as to refresh areas that we have previously covered as the need arises. This new imagery, such as the one over Melut, will directly benefit the many organizations working in Sudan and ultimately support the building of a solid basemap of Sudan to achieve long-term socioeconomic objectives.

Town of Melut (before 2/16/2004, after 1/30/2011). In Melut, there is a humanitarian hub where many services are delivered to at risk populations, including food, water, health care, education, and more. Given the varying needs of each of these services, maps can provide a variety of planning benefits for expansion, staff safety, and emergency procedures.

Google is also contributing to various humanitarian efforts, including the Satellite Sentinel project, by helping to build an active and self-sustained Sudanese mapping community -- locally and among the Sudanese diaspora. This community will help improve maps of Sudan by using Google Map Maker, a product that combines the power of mapping with community engagement.

Dedicated mappers have started building the foundation for a Sudan mapping community, resulting in high quality maps of Sudan. But this is a long term process that requires deep commitment from various stakeholders and community groups. To join the Sudan mapping efforts, and offer feedback, please join our Sudan community mailing list or visit our team site.

France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org

Let’s build a better map of Southern Sudan

Sudan is preparing to vote on January 9 to decide if the South will become independent from the North. The referendum is part of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005 ending the Civil War, which lasted 22 years and led to the deaths of an estimated 2 million people. Analysts fear the possibility of renewed violence.

Sudan is a huge country (2.5 million km2), with an estimated population of 44 million people, but it’s poorly mapped. Without basic geospatial information, it’s difficult for humanitarian agencies and first responders to monitor and evaluate the risks and current needs, target their efforts, and mobilize proper resources. At times like these, it is critical to have good maps on roads, settlements, voting stations, hospitals, buildings and other services - with both local and official names - to generate better, faster responses.

This is one of the goals of the Satellite Sentinel project, which is using imagery, field reports and Google Map Maker to conduct human rights monitoring along the border between North and South Sudan. This effort is the result of an unprecedented collaboration between Not On Our Watch, Google, the Enough Project, the United Nations UNITAR Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT), the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and Trellon, LLC.

If you have knowledge of Southern Sudan, an interest in mapping, and some free time, we encourage you to join the effort. With tools such as Google Map Maker and Sudan Vote Monitor, you have the opportunity to take concrete action by improving the map, helping to monitor and report human rights violations in near-real time and providing insight into the socio-political climate prevalent in the country and region.

Global Call for Action:
Together let’s build a better map of Southern Sudan. Your local knowledge and mapping contributions of schools, hospitals, and landmarks will be extremely useful to the humanitarian community to quickly build a picture of the situation, especially in these areas of interest.

Items that you can map:

• Towns and town names (Arabic and local names especially)
• Roads (in-town roads as well) and trails
• Displaced persons camps
• Cultural landmarks
• Geographic landmarks
• Schools
• Orphanages, shelters etc.
• Hospitals
• Community centers
• Border crossing points
• Nomadic camps
• Markets and large cattle gathering points

This is an opportunity to utilize the power of community engagement through mapping. We welcome you to get acclimated to Map Maker through our Getting Started page, and then invite you to join our Sudan-specific discussions.

Posted by France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org

Mapping Korogocho

[Cross-posted from the Google Africa Blog]

At Google we want to make the world's information more accessible and useful to people all over the globe. This includes providing rich local geographic data because a high percentage of search queries have a geographic component. We have often spoken about Google Map Maker, a tool that allows people to help create a map by adding or editing features such as roads, businesses, parks, schools and more.

We are ever grateful to Kenya’s active online cartographers who have helped us build our maps from the ground up. Maps are valuable for users, governments, NGOs, universities and entrepreneurs alike, who can visualise, plan and market the areas and projects that they work on. The mapping session we held recently with 21 volunteers in Korogocho, one of the largest slum neighbourhoods in Nairobi, is one such example of cartographers literally putting their community on the map. We joined forces with Internews and a group of inspiring volunteers from the Korogocho community to build their very own maps.

Ahmed Abdi of Korogocho receives a certificate from Jacqueline Rajuai on completion of the mapping exercise

We only had two and a half days to achieve this task but the group was up to the challenge! After 2 hours of hands-on training on the mapping tools, we embarked on mapping Korogocho and, thanks to the amazing hardworking volunteers from the area, they have now added all sorts of rich information about Korogocho on Google Maps (Map Maker). See below for ‘before’ and ‘after’!

Korogocho before the mapping session

Korogocho after the volunteers mapped the area on Google Map Maker

During this productive mapping exercise, the group mapped social and health infrastructure that is important to their community, including water vendors, public toilets, bio-gas projects, schools, Adopt-a-Light locations and more.

This is the beginning of bigger things that Internews has in store for the area, and we are grateful that they approached us to help them take that first step towards an impressive new map of an important part of Nairobi. We are pleased to continually improve our maps functionality for Africa, and helping to make Africa's information readily available.

Posted by Jackie Rajuai, GIS Specialist, Google Kenya

In Africa, citizen cartographers tell their stories through their maps

Earlier this month, we invited 60 of Google Map Maker’s top users in Africa to a community workshop in Nairobi. The event celebrated the contributions of exceptional mappers from across Africa who have collectively mapped hundreds of thousands of roads, cities and buildings, covering more than half the population in Africa. Participants from places including Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Morocco, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania came together for this unique and inspiring opportunity to tell their stories, learn from each other, and share their mapping experiences using Google Map Maker. Check out the the Super Mappers Conference site for more details.


Meeting these passionate online mappers inspired all of us to think not only about creating maps to fulfill a practical need, but also about why we map and the deeply personal stories a map can tell. During these two days, we traveled to places that we perhaps may never see in person, but now mean more to us when we see them on a map because of the stories of mappers such as Noé Diakubama.

Noé grew up in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), a country that has suffered many years at war. He is now living in Belgium and proud to give back to his country and people via mapping.

His mapping story began in Mbandaka, where he grew up. Noé liked to walk. Walking was about exploration and discovery. And Noé had many places to go, including secret spots to find wild vegetables and the EALA botanical garden. But without a map it was easy to get lost, so he could never wander too far from home. With his uncle, Noé sketched a small paper illustration of Mbandaka and its landmarks - that was his first experience with mapping! A few years later, he was surprised to find Mbandaka poorly represented on Google Maps; it only showed the city airport and two roads. Using Google Map Maker, he began mapping the roads by himself, and then asked friends and family to help him with adding local roads, their names and so on. Together, they created the first map ever of Mbandaka!


When I asked Noé why he maps, he replied:

Everyday, I spend hours and hours in front of my computer… mapping. My rewards include seeing a smile on the face of someone who sees for the first time the name of his/her street on the Internet, and knowing that someone benefited from the maps I created - kids journeying in the neighborhoods, business owners, or tourists. And ultimately, I want to see Africa being mapped and these maps made accessible to everyone. My message to other Africans: don’t be just a spectator, let’s all share our knowledge and start mapping cities and remote areas. We will soon, together, complete the mapping of our continent!

I’m used to seeing maps and thinking of them as a collection of edits or points of interests. It was an incredible feeling to personally meet and interact with the people behind the creation of the many dots on our maps. This was a gentle and welcome reminder that maps are not static. They’re alive, they’re personal, and they tell the stories of the people who create them. Mapping allows each of us to be a driving force for change and growth in both our immediate communities and the rest of the world. Let’s continue mapping, let’s stay connected through the Map Your World Community, and let’s continue doing amazing things together!

Posted by France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org

Google Map Maker and UNITAR Collaboration Shines at Shanghai World Expo

This past weekend at the 2010 World Expo, UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and Google gave a joint presentation and informational session about their recent work together in global humanitarian mapping.

Illustrating his remarks with information about the Pakistan 2010 flood relief efforts, UNITAR Geospatial Analyst Josh Lyons explained how Google Map Maker helps his organization quickly and accurately produce geospatial products and emergency response maps. By leveraging the high quality, up-to-date information provided by users in Google Map Maker, UNITAR is able to produce and distribute helpful composite map products using tools such as UNITAR’S Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT). These products played a key role in facilitating modern humanitarian relief for the recent disaster in Pakistan.

UNITAR/UNOSAT map for Pakistan flood analysis, with transport data from Google Map Maker

Dr. Carlos Lopes, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNITAR, expressed his excitement both to work with Google and that UNITAR/UNOSAT resources that had previously been spent on mapping data collection could now be invested directly into analysis. He remarked that users and beneficiaries aided by this collaborative effort include operational UN agencies, international NGOs and national entities from government and civil societies, and of course, the people directly affected by disasters and other crises.

We hope that the interest and increased awareness that the Shanghai World Expo event generated about Google Map Maker helps to build an even stronger user community. It’s the online mapping contributions of volunteers across the globe that enable Map Maker to be a valuable tool for humanitarian activities like this as well as a source of quality maps in the developing world. Let’s continue mapping the world together!

Posted by Andrea Fang Chu, Google Maps Software Engineer

Map Makers respond to the Pakistan landslides

In January 2010, a series of landslides hit Atta Abad, in the Gilgit-Baltistan semi-autonomous region of Pakistan, causing loss of lives and blocking the Hunza River. Since then, the region and its 500,000 people are under continual threat from the rising height of the lake formed due to the landslide. Lake waters have already displaced about 20,000 residents; some villages are completely submerged while downstream communities are at risk from flood waves.

This event took the work of Omer Sheikh and Jabran Rafique -- dedicated individuals, exceptional Google Map Maker users & advocates -- to another level.

Omer currently lives in Lahore while Jabran resides in London. They live thousands of kilometers apart but have a shared commitment to map their country and assist their people as they cope with this disaster situation.

“From the onset of the disaster, the international community seemed to be hardly aware of the situation. Worst...I was unable to locate on a map where Atta Abad was! As a mapper, my first appeal went out to the Google Map Maker team, and Google Maps Pakistan,” recalled Omer.

Together, Jabran and Omer created a website, http://www.local.com.pk/hunza/, that uses the Map Maker API -- for raising awareness about the importance of this emergency and making disaster data more accessible and useful. The publishing of post-disaster imagery, made available by Google, is also allowing Map Maker users to provide unique mapping contributions (i.e. shelters, health centers, flood prone areas, etc), all to be brought online in near-realtime. The website is now recognized as a primary source of information for the Hunza disaster, and as such is being listed on the UN-Spider knowledge portal.

Jabran describes their mapping process: “The gap in information available to the public was obvious. After getting the latest imagery, we started mapping the area. We used Map Maker as our baseline data and started adding other feature of interested such as locations of towns, the extent of the lake, submerged bridges & highway sections.”

When asked about his motivations for becoming so involved in this effort, Omer explains: “We hope that our effort to make reliable information more widely available will help disaster relief managers and decision makers save lives and prevent more damage to the fragile economy of this remote region. In contributing to Map Maker, my desire is to establish a basic framework around which we can document, understand and bring transparency to the events taking place around me. We, as a mapping community, need to better demonstrate the benefits of online collaboration and the utility of tools such as Map Maker for rapid dissemination of information.”

This is the journey of two mappers who have used the Map Maker community as a basis to connect the ideas & skills of dedicated individuals -- for the better good of their own community. To contribute to the Hunza Landslide Relief Support please visit this website.

Posted by France Lamy, Google.org

The world just became smaller: driving directions in 111 new countries

Members of our Google Map Maker community have always told us that the biggest milestone after launching maps for their countries is adding driving directions. A few months ago we launched driving directions in 18 countries in Eastern Europe and Asia-Pacific. We have now enabled directions in 111 new countries and territories across the globe.

So, whether you find yourself in Lima, Peru or visiting Iceland or driving from Johannesburg to Nairobi, you can now use Google Maps to find out how to get around.

Driving directions on Google Maps are now available for:

Algeria, American Samoa, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, French Guiana, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Iceland, Iran, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands Antilles, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Qatar, Reunion, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, Western Sahara, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Do give it a try and tell us what you think on Map Your World Community. If you find something that is missing or not otherwise quite right, you can always map it at www.google.com/mapmaker.

Posted by Vishwajith Krishnamurthy, Software Engineer; Zareer K'Maneck, Program Manager; and Manik Gupta, Product Manager

Map Maker Graduation: Part IV

Since it opened in June 2008, Google Map Maker has served as a platform for individuals to share more about their part of the world. This has significantly enhanced access to mapping data of historically under-mapped regions of the world. We're now excited to add 17 new countries and territories that are now ready to graduate from Google Map Maker to Google Maps, bringing our total to 160 regions:

Brunei, Colombia, Cuba, Cyprus, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), French Southern and Antarctic Lands, Kiribati, Kuwait, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Syria, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yemen

Here are a few “before and after” snapshots highlighting some of the valuable contributions created by our mapping community:
Cyprus:


Damascus, Syria:


Panama City, Panama:


A big thanks to all of the wonderful Map Maker contributors. This wouldn’t be possible without you. We hope more of you will join us in mapping your world. Here’s the complete list of Map Maker countries now on Google Maps.

Posted by Vishwajith Krishnamurthy and Jessica Pfund, Map Maker Team

Resources for Chile earthquake response

After hearing of the devastatingly powerful 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile overnight, we began to mobilize several teams to see what Google resources could help with disaster response.

Google Map Maker is currently available in Chile, and we are making this map data available for download by relief and aid organizations. Visit http://mapmaker.google.com/datadownload for more information and to access the data. If you have familiarity with the region, please help these efforts by contributing data about Chile on Google Map Maker. We will be refreshing the download data frequently to reflect the latest set of contributions.

For those concerned about loved ones in Chile, the Person Finder tool, initially created in the wake of the Haiti earthquake, can be used to submit or search for information about individuals who may have been affected. The Person Finder tool has been translated into Spanish and is currently available at http://chilepersonfinder.appspot.com/, as well as several media sites and the US Department of State website. The gadget can easily be embedded on any site:

This My Map shows earthquake measurement data from the US Geological Survey to help give a better understanding of the areas most affected and the extent of the powerful aftershocks:

View Chile Earthquake helpful information in a larger map. This map will continue to be updated with additional information.

We will be updating imagery, maps, and other information as they become available and will continue to post updates to this blog. An overview of resources available, latest news, and links to make a donation can be found on Google's Chile earthquake relief page at http://www.google.com/relief/chileearthquake/.

Posted by Jessica Pfund, Google Map Maker team

Announcing the winner of our Map Maker global competition

Google's first Global Mapping Competition ran from December 15 - January 31, 2010 and the big moment has come: announcing the winner! The competition entrant who added the most universities, schools, hospitals, and medical clinics with high quality into Google Map Maker was (drumroll please...) Wayne Dell Manuel of the Philippines.

Already one of the top 10 all-time mappers, Wayne made hundreds of moderations and added more than 1500 qualifying map features (i.e. schools, universities, hospitals and medical clinics) during the course of the competition. Google Map Maker is available in more than 175 countries and allows users to become "citizen cartographers" by adding and editing map features.

Wayne Dell Manuel at the 2009 Map Maker user conference in Bangalore, India.

Wayne first found out about Map Maker right here on this blog, "which is also where I found out about the competition," said Wayne. "For the competition, I added mostly government schools in the biggest island of the Philippines: Luzon. Government schools in the country tend to be used as temporary evacuation centers

during times of calamity such as typhoons and earthquakes which are common to the Philippines. It would greatly help in disaster planning and management."

Wayne's dedication to mapping his homeland is motivated by helping others: "After the devastating typhoon Ketsana (local name Ondoy), a volunteer group used Google Maps to map distress calls, among other things, to facilitate rescue operations. I was so happy to see the roads that I've helped map were used to locate the houses." Map Maker maps display in Google Maps for more than 140 countries and territories, including the Philippines.

As of late last year, Wayne's mapping contributions in the Philippines are also available as part of the Map Maker download program. Non-profits, government agencies and individuals can use the mapping data in the Philippines and more than 60 other countries for research, humanitarian relief and other non-commercial uses.

For his remarkable mapping efforts, Wayne has won a $50,000 UNICEF donation to benefit projects empowering young people through technology in the Philippines. Wayne will get a VIP tour of the local projects in the Philippines that are benefiting from the $50,000 donation, and he will also attend the upcoming Supper Mapper 2010 conference at Google's office in Zurich, Switzerland.

Congratulations to Wayne for winning the grand prize -- the $50,000 donation to UNICEF will go to projects in the Philippines!

Posted by Jennifer Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer

Imagery & maps in the wake of the Haiti Earthquake

Update (7pm): The layer is now available -- see more details in this post.

Yesterday a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, causing significant destruction and devastation. Since then, we've received numerous requests from relief organizations and our users to share recent satellite imagery of the country. One of our imagery partners, GeoEye, has just provided us with post-earthquake imagery from Haiti. We're working on making it available as a KML overlay in Google Earth as soon as possible; in the meantime, here is snapshot of the imagery we'll be providing. The image was taken at approximately 10:27am Eastern today and this photo shows Port-au-Prince.


We will update this blog post as soon as the layer is available.

We hope that Google Map Maker can also play a role in disaster relief efforts. We originally opened Haiti on Google Map Maker in response to hurricanes that hit the region over a year ago. Since then, many committed individuals have contributed rich data for the country, and now maps of Haiti appear on Google Earth and Google Maps. Today, we have made this Map Maker data for Haiti available to the UN in its raw form for the earthquake relief efforts. If you have any local knowledge to share, please help us continue to build a better map of Haiti with Google Map Maker. The latest, up-to-date Map Maker information will be immediately accessible through the Google Maps API as a map tile set and through this Mapplet.

Posted by Dylan Lorimer, Product Manager and Jessica Pfund, Google Map Maker team

Finding your way in 18 new countries

In certain parts of the world, getting around is a challenge. Not only are cities in emerging economies evolving rapidly, oftentimes there are no online services to help people navigate.

One of the most requested features on Google Maps in Asia and Eastern Europe is driving directions. Google Map Maker users in these countries have been busy adding detailed data like turn restrictions, road priorities, speeds and one-ways. Using that rich data, we've been able to launch driving directions in 18 Eastern European and Asia-Pacific countries. You can now navigate using Google Maps in Albania, Belarus, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, French Polynesia, Guam, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Nepal, New Caledonia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

Routing from Lahore to Karachi or Bucharest to Minsk has never been so easy! Next time I visit my favorite city, Hanoi, I'll be able to get around with ease.

Map Maker was created with a vision of enabling users to contribute high quality, up-to-date, routeable maps data. With this launch, for many of these countries, this is the first time users have had any directions. This has become a reality only because of our passionate users.

If you live or are visiting one of these countries, do give it a try and tell us what you think on Twitter at @googlemapmaker. As always, these are your maps - in case you don't find a road, a turn or one-way is incorrect in your neighborhood, you can map it at mapmaker.google.com.

Posted by Vishwajith Krishnamurthy, Software Engineer, Google Map Maker