Digital maps and location data are maps of roads, buildings, addresses and places, built as a database that software can read, kept up to date all the time and sold on subscription. Carmakers, delivery and logistics companies, ride-hailing and travel apps, and governments buy them. They show the map on screens, and they use the data to find addresses and plan routes.
A digital map is not a picture. It is a set of records. Each road is a line made of points, each with a latitude and a longitude. Each road record also carries facts: the road's name, its direction, its number of lanes, its speed limit, the turns that are banned, and the usual travel time at each hour of the day. Each place, such as a petrol pump or a hospital, is a point with a name, an address and opening hours. Software uses these records to answer questions. What is the fastest route? Which address is at this point? Which ATMs are within 2 km?
Where does the data come from? Map makers combine several sources. Satellite and aerial images show new roads and buildings. Survey cars with cameras and laser scanners drive the roads and record signs and lane markings. Connected cars and phones send position readings with the owner's identity removed, which show where traffic actually moves and how fast. More and more, geospatial AI reads the images and finds the changes automatically. In India, the government's 2021 guidelines on geospatial data allow Indian companies to collect and publish map data without prior approval. Foreign companies face more limits on the most detailed data.
Consider a new flyover that opens in Chennai on a Monday morning. Within hours, position readings show cars moving along a line where the map has no road. The map maker's software flags the change. An editor checks it against fresh images and adds the flyover, with its one-way direction and speed limit. Within days, delivery apps that request map data through the provider's API receive the new road. An API is a fixed way for one company's software to send requests to another company's software and get answers back. Cars receive the change later, at the next map update for their navigation screens.
The same map is sold in several forms. Carmakers buy it for the navigation screen in the digital cockpit, and for the speed limits that advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) use. For driver assistance, map makers also sell a far more detailed high-definition map. Fleets and delivery companies use the map through a location platform, which finds addresses and supplies travel times to route optimisation software.
A digital map differs from a geographic information system (GIS). The map is the base layer, the shared picture of the world. A GIS is software in which a company places its own data, such as its pipes or its customers, on top of that base and analyses it. Map data is one of the clearest examples of data as a service.