Although mapping technologies have revolutionized the way we create spatial data, field mapping still lies at the heart of every geography fanatic. Not only is field mapping a great way to verify what we see from space, it also helps in capturing details unique to a locality and is so much fun!

A few weeks ago, some of us at Mapbox went out for a field mapping quest to map POIs, trees, house numbers and levels for the buildings around our neighborhood (Indiranagar, Bangalore). Manohar, Ajith and I teamed up with Nikhil, Abhishek and Jothi respectively, to add as much data as possible.

There’s always something to map for everyone!

Along with the fieldpapers, we also used Maps.me and Mapillary to supplement the paper based approach. Ajith added POIs, while me and Manohar added house numbers, building levels and trees.

Following are some take aways on using Maps.me:

• Maps.me has a nice interface for adding points onto the maps. But, the predefined list of features lacks some common labels such as shop.
• Maps.me groups all changes to a single changeset and uploads it when you are connected online. Once you login with OSM, the syncing is handled seamlessly.
• This app supports adding notes. This is useful in cases where a shop shifts to a different location or when a user cannot find the right tag.

With such an app in place, fieldpapers maybe unnecessary. Having said that, the field mapping exercise carried out by me and Jothi entirely relied on them. Thanks to the terrible battery life of my phone 📴 😄 . So, my friends field papers are never going to go obsolete!

Some concerns while using fieldpapers:

• If we set out to map on a rainy day or in case of a coffee spill, we all know what is going to happen to our sketches.
• It gets cluttered if we add too much notes.
• You have to manually enter the edits into OSM.

The fieldpaper with our edits

In about two hours of time we were able to add 22 POIs, ~120 house addresses and 40 trees. We also got a chance to capture some amazing street view images using Mapillary. Information such as these could have extended applications in planning our neighbourhood better.

10th Main Road

On the whole, our field mapping experience was really good. It gave us an opportunity to explore our neighborhood and helped us understand the pros and cons of using fieldpapers and mobile mapping apps.