Inbound licensing, data quality and formats

United Maps generates, buys, processes and sells hyperlocal data products.  
The process in a nutshell can be found here.

This page is an overview to the terminology, constraints and collateral conditions:

• Primary and Secondary Data
• Confidence Levels and Data Quality
• Data Formats
• Level of Detail (LoD)
• Inbound Licensing: rights and permissions
• How is data transferred, stored and maintained?
• Inquiries

Primary and Secondary Data

• Primary data refers to datasets United Maps licenses from either Navteq or Tele Atlas, the two global providers of fully navigable data.
• Secondary data covers additional datasets that enhance or densify primary data's attributes if being conflated within United Maps proprietary algorithms and editorial workflows.

Confidence Levels and Data Quality

United Maps licenses data from public administration, governmental authorities (e.g. national, regional and local cadastre) and agencies (e.g. surveying offices, road construction and maintenance departments), NGOs and commercial providers.

Due to legal requirements, cadastral data carries maximum precision. Trying to be more precise than cadastral registers means to go out and remeasure: a pointless undertaking.

If the business case is positive, United Maps always licenses the best data quality available or the highest possible confidence level.

The term 'confidence level' in our understanding is an indirect measurement for the data quality, an index of completeness. The usecase is straightforward: we positively want to cover all available (e.g.) public tennis courts. If the real and absolute number of this item is unknown, we need to approximate. The higher the confidence into an appoximated data set is, the better and more complete it is, the more valuable it is for us (and for you as a customer, ultimately).


The overall data quality as a product of both the confidence level and the accuracy or precision of the vector data sets. Logically, this always is a compromise and a matter of  prodiction thresholds and quality expectations.

United Maps' goal is to achieve the best attainable quality.

Accuracy of Vector Data

If vector data and inherent geometries are processed, quality may be rated by absolute accuracy and/or relative accuracy, namingly its geometric precision compared to the real world versus its intrinsic, relative accuracy.

You may have noticed this in public mapping services' hybrid views, where sometimes, streets cross through buildings.

As we do have processes in place to both measure and correct both: the accurate, the better (as you might have guessed, already).

Data Formats

• We prefer structured data formats like ArcGIS Personal Geodatabase or ESRI's Shapefile, AutoCAD DXF, MapInfo TAB.
• If the data comes as vector with relevant attributes included, we're happy.
• If it is tabular data, dumps or whatever arcane format and still well documented: we're happy also.

For outbound licensing, please see the Formats, Naming and Delivery page.

We explicitely do not buy aerial, satellite or any other pixel formats. (because "vector is more corrector" [courtesy Dr. Joe Berry])

Level of Detail (LoD)

The level of detail should be comparable to a hyperlocal map scale of 1:5.000 to 1:10.000 which goes well beyond well known public mapservices' resolution and extends mapping on a rooftop-perspective to maps on a human scale.

If you can provide indoor data for large venues, we're interested to learn about - alas this scale is slightly out of scope for today (but a natural extension of what United Maps does).

Inbound Licensing

Selling data to United Maps

If United Maps buys data, the licensing process is inbound (from our perspective).
If we sell or syndicate data (services, hyperlocal data products, themes, content), licensing is outbound.

If you want to license data to us, here's a (constantly growing) list of data and content we seek, primarily for all European and neighbouring countries and on a country-by-country basis:

• street networks including pathways, hiking and biking trails
• landuse including housing and industrial estates, parks and recreational areas
• precise housenumbers and house-footprints
• both rail-and street-bound public transport facilities
• waterways and hydrology
• administrative boundaries
• points of interest (POI) e.g. sights, public buildings, civil services
• colloquial and alternative names for POIs and areas
• (...)

A full list of themes, content and attributes can be drawn from the product feature page.

What rights and permissions does United Maps need to buy from you?

United Maps expects to receive a free initial sample. The sample (or parts of it) will be processed into a showcase demonstrating the general validity, applicability and viability within United Maps’ business case.

United Maps grants to use this showcase solely for non-commercial and evaluation and marketing purposes. Read as: we will not make money with sample data.

In a positive business case, we'll start bilateral negotiation for a (exclusive or non-exclusive) perpetual license with a potentially periodical update contract. Effectively, United Maps shall be entitled to distribute this data, edited and refined within products, to clients or end-users (third parties) on a worldwide scope. Read as: we need to have the right to use your data in a way that perspectively enables us to produce versioned data products or maps.

If you do not own all of those indispensable rights and hence you're not able to assign those rights to United Maps, we'll be unable to cut a deal with you. For rather difficult and complex collateral legal conditions, we need our licensors to grant us a indemnity clause to be free of external claims.

At the same time, United Maps takes adequate precaution to prevent extraction, separating or individual utilization of the data incorporated. United Maps is willing to an upfront payment and/or a variable percentage of the respective turnover United Maps generates in the business case negotiated. Reads as: we make sure that your data and our data products are used as commissioned.

How is data transferred, stored and maintained?

Data from licensors is transferred by good old FTP. Vector data is preferably received in SHP-format. Tabular data is preferably obtained in structured text or popular database formats. United Maps stores all data in an internal and secured database. Technically, every dataset is flagged with a unique licenser key and is completely traceable through all our workflows.  

Inquiries

For inquiries, if you want to license data to us, please contact: