Why Soar is not a competitor of Google Maps
Soar is often compared with Google Maps. However, as the following article explains, both companies are very different to each, not only in the way the operate but also in the products and applications they offer.
After Google Maps was released in 2005, many companies realized the power of a world map with accurate and reliable data. While commercial mapping companies used authoritative data, open source community-based efforts such as ‘OpenStreetMap’ or ‘Mapillary’ emphasized the importance of freely available mapping data.
While Google Maps was an eye-opener for many, as a mapping product it had its limitations: the underlying data wasn’t updated regularly, had defined resolutions, is under centralised ownership, and only offers natural colour data. This results in a static, low resolution map. Soar, on the other hand, offers a continuously updated global Super-map that is created and maintained by an active world-wide community, a marketplace that allows for instant transactions, and of course — extremely high resolution content. Not only will this generate a pull-effect for mapping data users everywhere, it is also expected to provide a basis for new applications that will use this map as a foundation to build a business on.
Soar Democratizes Mapping Technology
A live global Super-map is a powerful product, but it needs to be built first. This is why Soar also focuses on data re-use, rather than duplicating or creating more data. As up to 80% of all satellite, aerial and drone imagery is only used once, what could be better than bringing together geospatial data users so that the same data can be re-used rather than captured multiple times? The technology is already there to realize this idea: Soar not only uses cloud computing (Alibaba Could), to store massive amounts of world-covering spatial data, it also employs blockchain technology so that no intermediate parties are required to handle data transactions — resulting in almost instant transactions and payments. This is a very different business model than that of Google, that is not a reseller of spatial data.
Soar’s Holistic Data Approach
Other than Google, Soar takes a holistic approach to geospatial data by combining multiple types of spatial data for building its world map. While Soar primarily is about satellite, aerial and drone imagery, it will offer other types of spatial data, such as weather data, LiDAR and video. This is more in tune with how the geospatial market is evolving: over time, more geospatial data types were introduced and adopted, which resulted in more data standards as a result. Also, data volumes increased and keep doing so: geospatial data is captured and updated ever more rapidly, while cloud server data storage costs keep dropping.
Soar will offer not just authoritative geospatial data, but also crowd-sourced data. This is another difference with Google Maps, that only uses authoritative geospatial data for its raster and vector base-maps. Specifically, the drone market has developed itself rapidly over the last few years, resulting in many crowd-sourced, local mapping projects that resulted in large datasets that are waiting to be unlocked through Soar.
Empowering the Next Generation of Mapping Applications
Even though digital maps are available to anyone with a mobile phone, this doesn’t mean that geospatial data are ubiquitous. New technologies, such as blockchain, will require mapping data as a building block to be able to do business, just as today’s businesses rely on data from Google Maps. Again, Soar was designed to enable such applications to be created when the moment arises. Soar’s global Super-map will not only power existing mapping applications, but new ones as well.
One area that is on the rise, is Artificial Intelligence (AI). The geospatial industry has already demonstrated the first applications that introduce machine learning, which provides the foundation for new AI applications later on. One example is automation of object analysis in geospatial imagery: these are new workflows that require no human intervention and are carried out fully automatically by software. But this is only the beginning. The more data a platform can use in order to train its models to become self-learning, the better. What’s more valuable than an continuously growing platform such as Soar that can rely on an ever-growing supply of spatial data as the foundation for new AI-based applications?
Building a Living Super-map of the World
In this article, we discussed why Soar is not a competitor of Google Maps. Soar is a dynamic system that always requires new data in order to be up-to-date, whereas Google Maps is a static map service. Soar’s methodology for building this live map is also very different than Google Maps: it is a community-based effort driven by supply and demand. In comparison, Google does not offer a marketplace for selling geospatial data. Soar’s world map combines authoritative satellite and mapping data, combined with crowd-sourced imagery: this is also very different from Google Maps, that only uses raster and vector data for its base-maps from third parties. Finally, we discussed Soar’s long-term vision: its world-map will empower new mapping applications yet unknown. An example is the potential of AI, for which Soar’s huge geospatial data repository holds a lot of potential.
Website: https://soar.earth/
Demo Test net: https://demo.soar.earth/
Telegram: https://t.me/SoarEarth
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Soar_Earth
Email: jessie@soar.earth
