Google Maps has announced new partnerships in India with local authorities and companies building to bring customised features unique to the needs of India, offering citizens, businesses, developers, non-profits, and government information and insights to get things done locally in relevant ways.
“Many of these features and capabilities built into Google Maps have been born out of deep collaborations with local authorities and companies. This partnership approach has been central to our work in India over the last decade and a half, and will continue to play a fundamental role in our goal of building a more helpful Google Maps in the country,” said Miriam Daniel, VP, Google Maps Experiences.
“India’s digital adoption continues to move at a phenomenal pace, and we remain focused on accurately modeling, reflecting, and solving for today’s rapidly-evolving India. This means constantly finding new ways to use our mapping tools and technology to solve challenges of today and tomorrow by enabling a more reliable, accurate, and visual maps experience for our users, solving local challenges for communities at scale and facilitating a more sustainable environment for future generations,” added Daniel.
Enabling a more reliable and accurate visual Maps experience with Street View
Street view will be available on Google Maps in India with fresh imagery that is licensed from local partners, leading technology companies, Genesys International and Tech Mahindra. The India launch marks the first time that street view data collection is being brought to life completely by local partners.
The partners have covered over 150,000 km spanning 10 cities in India, including Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Nashik, Vadodara, Ahmednagar, and Amritsar. This will be expanded to more than 50 cities by the end of 2022.
“Technology is not just the backbone of the global economy but is also a strategic tool which can turn insights into solutions, uncover trends and predictions, and transform businesses in a sustainable manner. Today, there is an increasing need for technologies that turn insights from GIS (Geographic Information Systems) into ready products that can be utilised by customers.
The GIS industry has only grown manifold with time, owing to increased data availability and the development of smart cities all over the world. In line with this, our partnership with Google is another step toward delivering high-quality and immersive mapping experiences to the people of India,” said Birendra Sen, Business Head, Business Process Services, Tech Mahindra.
“We were the first Indian firm to perform street imaging of all major cities in India. Our fleet is still swiftly photographing Indian cities, bringing to life our city’s amazing tapestry of streets and landmarks and allowing us to comfortably visit our old neighborhoods or plan our trips. Google Maps has always been at the forefront of geospatial technology, and we are honoured to be an enabler of their efforts by offering the best technology to India and its people.
We are delighted to be a part of the Google Street View programme, and we feel that our partnership will go a long way towards offering the most helpful and engaging mapping experience for people and customers across India,” said Sajid Malik, Managing Director of Genesys International.
“We want to make sure everyone can benefit from Street View, so we’re also making the Street View API available to local developers enabling them to deliver richer mapping experiences within their apps and services. We believe the launch of Street View will turn a new page in India’s mapping experience, bringing the power of virtual imagery to help people visually explore, businesses create, and governments address local challenges,” added Daniel.
Solving Local Challenges for Communities
Google has announced partnerships with local traffic authorities to help India improve road safety and reduce traffic congestion.
To help support road safety efforts in the country, Google Maps will now show speed limits information shared by traffic authorities, starting with Bengaluru and Chandigarh. Google is looking forward to partnering with more cities in surfacing speed limits info on Google Maps.
“Our teams at Google have been using existing traffic patterns and the power of machine learning to help cities better optimise their traffic light timings, helping them reduce wait time at intersections, road congestion, and carbon emissions as well.
We have partnered with Bengaluru traffic police to help them optimise their traffic light timings and we have some exciting initial results. The pilot resulted in almost a 20 per cent reduction in congestion across all the intersections. We will be scaling this to all of Bengaluru, and extending this pilot to Kolkata and Hyderabad as well in the coming months,” said Daniel.
In partnership with local authorities and data aggregators, Google will also be providing information on road closures and incidents on Google Maps across eight cities in India, including Delhi, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Gurgaon, Bangalore, and Agra, to help people make informed travel decisions and avoid congestion zones.
Sustainable Environment
To date, Google has collaborated with 250 NGOs, 60 Universities, 30 government agencies, and 15 research organisations in India that have used their geospatial data and analytics as part of their initiatives to help the environment.
One such tool is the Google Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE), a tool that Google recently piloted to help cities and local governments measure emissions and identify reduction strategies.
Four Indian cities Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune and Aurangabad – are now using transport emissions data from EIE to develop their Climate Action Plans. Google had publicly launched Aurangabad’s EIE data, making it accessible to research organisations to help propose sustainable solutions for the city.
“We also want to help Indians make more informed travel decisions by equipping them with knowledge about air quality conditions. We have collaborated with the Central Pollution Control Board to make authoritative air quality information available on Google Maps. You’ll be able to access this information overlay by tapping the ‘Layers’ button at the top right and selecting the ‘Air Quality’ option,” concluded Daniel.