It’s a place where you can look at the Empire State Building from directly overhead, swing over to Australia for a three-dimensional view of the Sydney Opera House, and then zip over to Rome for look around the ruins of the Coliseum – all in a matter of moments.

It’s a place where you can look at the Empire State Building from directly overhead, swing over to Australia for a three-dimensional view of the Sydney Opera House, and then zip over to Rome for look around the ruins of the Coliseum – all in a matter of moments.

All of this is brought to you by Nokia-owned map website Here.com, which can take you around the world almost instantly. 

And the Nokia campus in south Fargo plays a significant role in making it happen, by creating work flows and engineering processes, and conducting project management and back-end quality testing.

Located just south of Interstate 94 near 25th Street, Nokia’s unassuming Fargo office is the base for the advanced production unit of Nokia’s Location and Commerce division, branded as “Here.” About 300 people work at the Fargo site, formerly known as Navteq.

But while the “Here” website with its three-dimensional renderings of several places, is nifty, it’s just one piece of the Nokia pie.

Four out of five cars in the world with in-dash navigation use Nokia maps, said Oskar Södergren, senior communications manager in Chicago for Nokia’s “Here.” Garmin’s personal navigation devices use the Nokia technology. Bing Maps and MapQuest are a couple of other recognizable names that tap Nokia map technology. 

The Nokia map content covers 196 countries, and the company makes 2.7 million changes to the map daily, according to information from Nokia. Data comes into the map from about 80,000 sources, plus a fleet of vehicles used to gather information. 

“The work that we do here out of Fargo, we’re connected with the whole world,” said Brian Carroll, director of advanced production in Fargo. “We have field staff in Europe, in Africa, in Latin America, and we interact with these guys on a regular basis, and we’re constantly going to these different locations.”

While the maps Nokia’s Fargo office helps create take users around the world, it also brings the world here for things like training, project setup and engagement with other parts of company. 

“This past year, we had over 300 people that came from all over the place into Fargo, working with our production team – people from India, people from China, people from Korea, people from Europe,” Carroll said.

The location database is also what drives the company’s City Lens app for Windows Phone. Users of the camera can view an overlay of the restaurants, stores and other businesses that are around them and access their information.

“It’s basically augmented reality,” Carroll said. 

While City Lens is currently an app for Windows Phone, Södergren said the company has a “platform agnostic approach” to its mapping data.

“We want to be able to serve any platform,” he said. “So the idea isn’t to be specific to Nokia phones or Windows Phone, but rather make our content available for any platform that wants to use it.” 

Navteq was founded in 1985 in Sunnyvale, Calif., as Navigation Technologies. The company opened a division in downtown Fargo in the mid-1990s with 16 employees. That site moved to its current location at 1715 Gold Drive S., in 2001. Finland-based Nokia purchased Navteq for more than $8 billion in 2007.

“I think already then, you saw that location would be the next frontier of mobility; that would be the next area of investment and technological development and where you would see a number of new services and new user behaviors developing from,” Södergren said.

The mapping process has moved well beyond simple, two-dimensional representation.

“A lot of people have this misconception we create a map like the old atlas days,” said Todd Hallstrom, senior manager for advanced production, which is based in Fargo. 

It’s a detailed, 3-D map world now. Nokia has a fleet of cars that gather information via LIDAR (light detection and ranging), allowing them to collect pinpoint data on things like bridge heights, road widths, distances from signs, and more. These units can collect more than 1.3 million data points per second, according to information from Nokia. LIDAR is also one of the tools used in the technology that allows road signs to be automatically detected and noted in the map database. 

“We’re really basically putting together a complete index of the real world,” said Carroll, a native of Fargo. “And what that’s going to enable us to do is to help cars navigate uphill and downhill so the transmissions can throttle down, the headlights will start to be able to move with the curvature of the road. And then eventually you’re going to be able to bring a lot of safety features into the car.”

Some features – such as the automated headlight curvature – are already available on vehicles.

Jim Gartin, president of the Greater Fargo/Moorhead Economic Development Corp., believes the Navteq/Nokia presence has helped spur growth in the Fargo-Moorhead area’s technology sector.

“This technology sector in the Greater Fargo-Moorhead area is growing, and it’s growing at an amazing rate,” he said. “And Nokia’s position here and what they have and the types of talent they bring and the salaries that they pay their staff, those are exactly what we want in this community.”

Geoservices aid Indian businesses drive $40 billion revenues

We use maps every day to find a variety of information, whether it’s a nearby hospital or for a good cup of coffee. Beyond the obvious, the digital technology behind online maps also helps overall economic growth, says a BCG study commissioned by Google.

The Indian geo-services industry generated $3 billion in revenue in 2011 alone while accounting for approximately 1.35 lakh jobs. The trickledown impact of the services is valued at about 15 times the size, said Lalitesh Katragadda, country head — India (product) at Google.

Geo services help Indian businesses drive at least $40 billion in revenue; save $70 billion in costs and affect 80 lakh to 90 lakh jobs. Indian consumers are also willing to pay $1.5 billion to $2 billion more than they currently do for geospatial services such as online maps, navigation systems and local searches given the advantages they provide, he added.

“Geo services help generate $2 billion in revenue within the Indian accommodation and food services industry alone. Restaurants reported benefiting from new customers finding them through local searches. Users benefit as it makes it easier for them to find the information on local offerings and creating valuable efficiencies in their day-to-day lives,” Katragadda said.

The Indian geo services industry includes companies that process the location data; providers that produce geo-enabled software, and expert industries that use geospatial data to generate insights. Beyond the industry itself, a wide variety of other sectors in India also use geo services to make their businesses more efficient and productive.

For example, Meru Cab, India’s largest cab provider and the third largest taxi operator globally, uses geo services for tracking its taxis. They have pioneered the concept of GPS-enabled taxis in India, using a tracking system to identify and match customers with the nearest cab and swiftly schedule pickups. Meru oversees close to 20,000 trips a day across Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Beyond location-based services, online maps also indirectly accelerate sales of smart phones. According to the technology, media and telecommunications research done by Deloitte Touche and Tohmatsu, customers look for features such as maps while making smartphone purchase decisions. Mapping and navigation services help to drive sales of smart pho­nes, adds the research.

Moreover, navigation services including digital maps play a crucial role in mobile advertising. Different types of mobile advertising are evolving at a different pace and in different directions. Mobile search — including paid positioning on maps and various forms of augmented reality, all of which can be informed by location — contribute to drive mobile ad spending, says Gartner.

Worldwide mobile advertising revenue is forecast to reach $11.4 billion in 2013, up from $9.6 billion in 2012. Worldwide revenue will reach $24.5 billion in 2016 with mobile advertising revenue creating new opportunities for app developers, ad networks, mobile platform providers, specialty agencies and even communications service providers in certain regions, said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner.

The Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya reinforced the need for U.S. Army Africa to have at its fingertips the ability to draw upon the most up-to-date detailed maps and imagery of any given region at a moment's notice.
 

Project Manager Mission Command, or PM MC, is helping to streamline the delivery of maps and imagery through the use of specialized geospatial products that work with the Army's primary mission command information system, known as Command Post of the Future, known as CPOF.

Although CPOF users have an initial set of digital maps at their disposal, there is usually not enough storage space to keep the latest and most detailed maps for every contingency across the globe. For combatant commands such as U.S. Army Africa, or USARAF, which covers most of the African continent, sometimes the need arises where they must request customized map sets.

Within days of the flare-up in Libya, PM MC coordinated the creation and installation of a specialized map set providing the most recent imagery and detailed maps of that area in support of USARAF.

"When the incident happened we identified the need and got the maps out to them," said Lt. Col. Tom Bentzel, the Army's product manager for Tactical Mission Command, or PdM TMC, part of PM MC. "We recognize there's use for both broad map coverage and detailed map imagery of specific areas of interest. When a new area of interest emerged in Libya, we were able to build a CPOF map set to cover it."

The maps sent were of several countries in northern Africa, including Libya, and offered sub-meter imagery that was orthorectified to allow for terrain displacement. 

"The maps are used on the Soldiers' CPOF systems to plan, fight and coordinate the common operating picture," said Matthew Tessier, map manager for PdM TMC and who developed the map sets in response to the flare up in Libya. "Without this technology and the accuracy of it, we could be putting our fighting forces in harm's way. Getting them the most up-to-date maps for their mission was and is essential to saving lives."

To continue supplying detailed map data sets in shorter turnaround times, PM MC, assigned to the Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, is building an expanded map library. So when conflicts arise, like the recent situation at the Amenas gas plant in Algeria or the clash in Mali, USARAF has detailed imagery if needed.

Tessier works closely with the Army's Geospatial Center and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to gather map data, then using specialized software converts it for CPOF users. 

CPOF allows units to plot real-time operations like firefights on a three-dimensional map, and instantly see updates. 

A recent switch by PdM TMC from proprietary software to a commercial mapping capability for the CPOF system has allowed more options when it comes to the data resources used to pull together maps and imagery. For example, PdM TMC can now take an online, commercially available map of a building or site of interest, such as a university or office complex, and combine it with existing military map sets.

"We switched over to commercial software that allows us to be more flexible with raw data," said Tessier. "We can now gather different types of data available either through military channels or civilian, and have the flexibility to incorporate that onto our map sets." 

PdM TMC is also working with Army terrain teams within USARAF to equip them with the same ability to build maps based upon their tactical needs, significantly shortening the amount of time needed to convert and ship the map sets.

Leslie Call, a PM MC field service representative with USARAF, said the new technology allows the unit to load five times more data onto each hard drive and equips USARAF geospatial engineers with the ability to quickly convert additional imagery for CPOF as hotspots arise.

"We are effectively cutting out the middle man and giving ownership of the maps where it belongs, with the unit," said Call. "The unit can accomplish in hours what used to take a week."

As CPOF continues to evolve, it is embracing the next generation of mission command technology with Command Post Web, a web version of CPOF offering similar capability to users with access to the Army's tactical network. This will also allow CPOF users to pull feeds from other map-based, mission command systems such as Tactical Ground Reporting, or TIGR, Distributed Common Ground System-Army, known as DCGS-A, and Joint Battle Command -- Platform, which is referred to as JBC-P. 

"One of our goals is to have the best maps out there," said Bentzel. "So in addition to deploying our own map servers we're making it possible to access other map services like DCGS-A and TIGR. Every commander wants great maps because they help visualize the battlefield and make better decisions. The tools we're building make great maps the norm, not the exception."