Purpose / Description

Nowadays, the digital appearance of various shops, organizations, and tourist destinations is playing an increasingly important role. When users want to visit these points, they usually search for the destination on the Internet first. The number one platform for this activity is the Google Maps interface. Therefore, it is extremely important that as many POIs (points of interest) as possible appear on the map.

The main objective of the project is to add all POIs within Debrecen's 4 km² area to the Google Maps database.

Process / Execution

To implement the project, we asked for the help of high school students, who were able to complete the hours of their compulsory community service. Students in groups of 2x6, accompanied by colleagues, toured the target area over 3 weeks, taking photos of each POI, which were then uploaded to a database with all necessary information.

Partners involved

21 students from 4 major high schools in Debrecen. Numerous colleagues from different departments at EDC Debrecen helped with data collection and digitalization.

Results

At the end of the project, which took 28 working days and a total of 755 working hours, the collaborative efforts of 39 people over a 4 km² area resulted in:

• 1,810 crawled and recorded POIs
• 2,578 photographs
• 1,176 POIs reviewed or uploaded to Google Maps with supplementary information

Out of the 1,176 uploaded POIs, only 96 were previously appropriate. Before the project, 233 POIs were not shown on the map, and we assigned images or additional data to 847 POIs. As a result, some POIs reached thousands of visits within just a few weeks.

Summary

After the project concluded, we held a press conference to present the results. The event, attended by representatives from Debrecen’s city administration and directors of the high schools, honored the students and institutions that participated.

During the press conference, it was noted that no one had ever attempted to add such a large amount of data to the Google Maps database at once.