When it comes to mapping the world, we all play our part. If you own a smart phone or device then, whether you are actively thinking about it or not, you will be contributing to the exponentially expanding mass of data that helps to chart the globe – and you will be doing so every day, every hour, even every minute of your life.
“We all carry, in our pockets, the same geospatial technology that was developed to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles from submarines,” says Ed Parsons (pictured), Google’s geospatial technologist and the man behind Google Maps, Google Street View and Google Earth. “The technology has been around for some time,” he adds. “It is just that now everyone has access to it.”
It is this data that Parsons and his team rely on to develop and enhance the technology that underpins the Google Maps application, which is now the most popular mapping tool in the world, boasting more than 1bn users. The system is a “virtuous circle”, says Parsons. For every contribution, the output improves, and the technology is the same whether it is being used by an individual working out the fastest commute or a government agency keeping an eye on developing crops.
This sort of instant access to the world is something that, just 10 years ago, most of us couldn’t have even imagined. But Parsons, who joined Google from Ordnance Survey in 2007, says that despite the globe being better mapped now than it has ever been before, there is a long way to go.
“We are still only around 25% of the way to where we need to be,” he adds. This comes down, in part, to politics, as some countries prefer not to be as well mapped and monitored as others. But there are other hurdles to overcome, and one of them is real estate.
Here, Parsons questions the property sector’s “conservative” use of data, along with its reticence to share the data it does have, talks about the challenges of mapping borders and reveals why he thinks taking geospatial technology inside buildings would be a “natural progression”.
We are all surveyors
The thing about Google Maps, says Parsons, is that it makes “everyone a surveyor” – a far cry from the geospatial mapping days of the not so distant past.
“At Ordnance Survey, we would send 100 surveyors out every weekday to map Britain,” he says. “Now, through mobile phones, there are tens of thousands, if not millions, of people contributing data and mapping the world every hour.” It is this prevalence and adoption rate that has ultimately fuelled the platform’s success.
Competitors have introduced alternatives to the market over the years but Google Maps has held firm since its launch in 2005 and the introduction of its Android mobile app in 2008.
In 2012, the platform faced its first significant threat, when Apple announced it had created its own Apple Maps service. The app officially replaced Google Maps with the launch of iOS 6 in September that year but was plagued with inaccuracies, errors and bugs. Three months later, Google released its own mapping app for iOS, which was downloaded more than 10m times within the first 48 hours and remains the most used to date.
In April 2018, statistics portal Statista tracked the most popular mapping apps in the US by number of monthly users. During that month, 154.4m users accessed the Google Maps app, making it by far the most popular service, followed by Waze – which also happens to be owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet – with 25.6m users and Apple Maps with 23.3m users.
Behind the curve
Now the time has come to take Google Maps to the next level, and this, says Parsons, is where real estate could come into its own. “From the outside looking in, property remains very conservative in terms of its use of data,” he says. “It still seems rather craft-based. Every building is unique and built on a bespoke case-by-case basis. It is not data driven enough in a world where almost everything else we do is based on data.
“We can spot where new roads and developments are being built, and we have access to a real-time view of how and where the world and our cities are growing and shifting. So it makes sense that how we build and use buildings should be driven much more by data. And to do that, more information needs to be shared so we know what the landscape looks like.”
Taking empty buildings as an example, Parsons says that there is no reason data from these properties couldn’t help address mobility issues around the world.
“Having buildings sitting empty doesn’t make sense, and many of our mobility issues, congestion and increased traffic are based on trying to move people around all at the same time,” he says. “If we could properly see exactly how and when people are using buildings then we could develop more flexible travel patterns, and the shape of our cities and the buildings within them would change radically.
“The gap is the data. We need to better understand how people live their lives. Once we know those patterns – and those patterns will change over time, of course – we can respond in real time.
“Maybe we should be focusing much more on mixed-use developments as a priority, where people can opt to work from somewhere closer to home. Or even localised neighbourhoods that are more self-sufficient in terms of having schools and shops where people can move around on much lower carbon producing transport, such as on foot or by bike.
“It is dramatic, and will mean that cities and environments take on a different shape to those we are used to traditionally. But the way we develop cities, buildings and infrastructure is changing.”
He does concede that sharing and making use of data for an industry like real estate is not without its challenges and hurdles – the major one being that this is all relatively new, particularly for a slow-to-adopt sector.
“It’s still a bit of a leap of faith,” he says. “Even something like building information modelling, which has been around for a while, is something that many people are still getting their heads around. Just the idea that you have this model, almost as a by-product of building a new development, and handing all of that over to the owner is quite unfamiliar. What can be done with that? How do you work out how to use it to better manage your real estate portfolio, be more efficient and better use the space you have?
“These are big questions, and it is still very early days. It took us hundreds, if not thousands, of years to make maps of places and around the outside of buildings and then work out how to actually analyse that information to then do something different with it.
“I mean, it has taken us a very long time to get to the point where most people jump in a car and use Waze or Google Maps – but that is effectively how we have developed the data we have held for years, and we haven’t successfully done that yet for the inside of buildings.”
Data dispersal
Parsons’ comparison between external and internal mapping time frames raises an interesting point. Given how long it has taken to successfully analyse external mapping data, is the pressure on real estate to make better use of its current data fair? Perhaps not, but sharing it – the first step towards having a body of information big enough to properly evaluate – is a different matter.
“Information is key in terms of being able to make decisions,” says Parsons. “We live and work differently to how we did 20 years ago, and while the property sector may be responding to it in terms of what it is delivering now, it needs to look more to the future.
“Sensor technology, sharing data and real-time observations will be the key to unlocking the right development going forward. And that is the information that the industry needs to be collecting and sharing.”
Is Parsons referring here to a shift in approach towards a Sidewalk Labs-style model of development? Alphabet’s innovation arm is planning to build a city “from the internet up” in Toronto to test a new, reactive approach to development.
To a degree, he says, although he is quick to point out that Sidewalk Labs’ strategy is based on trials and test beds rather than being a scalable approach to development in its current form.
“The clue is in the use of the word ‘labs’ in the company name,” he says. “They are testing an idea, or a series of ideas, that could help us to gather the data we need to build different, sustainable neighbourhoods reactively by using technology. At this stage, it is just to see what happens and what could be possible.
“So there will be less of an immediate impact and more of a look ahead to the future. But that’s exactly what we need to be doing to stay a step ahead – and it is something the wider real estate sector should be looking at with interest rather than shying away from.
“The world is changing, and I think we are at an inflection point. The world will look very different a decade from now, and the changes will be driven by technology.”
Maps in a minute
Would Google Maps ever look at mapping the inside of buildings itself?
I’m sure that Google will be one of many companies and players involved in this, but it is early days and I think the real advantage in this space is actually with the small guys who are currently in their garages tinkering with IoT sensors. They are more likely to be the people driving where much of the innovation comes from.
Lots of different flowers will bloom in this space before we work out where the real value is and how it’s going to make a big difference, so Google has a play but I wouldn’t say we’re in a leading position.
You have said that Google makes “practical, not political” decisions about borders. Why is that?
Perhaps we were rather optimistic in terms of wanting to make a map of the world that was universal. We wanted it to be the same map for everyone to use, but that doesn’t match the reality. The reality is complicated by politics and social constructs so it is almost impossible to come up with a map of political borders and boundaries that everyone will agree on, because different governments in different communities have different views of the world.
So we’ve ended up with a pragmatic solution by mapping the world differently depending upon where you’re looking at it from. And I suppose that’s probably no different to what it was historically – if you bought an atlas in the UK, it might display the world differently than an atlas bought in India or in South America.
What do you believe is the most important element of good mapping?
Simplicity. Know where to stop. A good map is often characterised by what it doesn’t show rather than what it does. The London Tube map is a great example of this. It just shows the stops and how they link together. Because that’s all people need to know.
They don’t need to know where any of the stops are in relation to Hyde Park or Buckingham Palace, and they don’t need an accurate representation of the exact route. They just need to know how many stops to go on which line.
Click here to listen to the full Tech Talk Radio interview with Ed Parsons.
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