How field data collection may enhance your business | Intetics

When you see the expression “field data collection,” your first association might be with government projects, but this service is also commonly used by many businesses. Structured field data can provide managers with a holistic view of locations, sites, terrains, and other places, allowing them to make informed decisions in the course of a project.

A relatively simple process, field data collection fuels large-scale projects, such as autonomous vehicle navigation or on-time road repairs. Existing map data about roads, territories or newly opened points of interest (POIs) becomes outdated frequently and continuously, and collecting field data is one of the key sources for updates.

Let’s delve into the nuances of field data collection and look at the potential value your business may gain from the service.

What is field data collection?

The field data collection process starts by allocating a person or team to take pictures of a chosen environment, location or POI in order to map them later. POIs are not only landmarks, but also cafes, corner shops, parking lots, restaurants, medical centers and various other places. A whole field team might work on updating particular POI data using a range of devices, but often a pedestrian with a smartphone is all that’s needed.

The ability to search POIs spurs users to download iOS and Android map apps. A good example is Google street view: the service presents value for navigation systems such as self-driving vehicles. In addition, real-world data is largely used in training artificial intelligence algorithms for various use cases.

At Intetics, we help our clients gather field data to enhance their positioning systems, maintain POI databases, streamline road marking work, map direction signs and highway exits, and more.

When you need field data collection for your business

If you are running a project related to environmental requirements such as specific terrain or newly opened POIs, field data collection is the service to use. Companies in the construction, telecom, oil and gas, agriculture or environmental protection industries need the service above all. Their focus might be on compliance with industry or government regulations, choosing an optimal location for new constructions or monitoring road conditions and other physical assets. Lots of applications use geotags, and machine learning–based navigation systems can drive vehicles partly due to geolocation and speech recognition technology, both of which need field data to function.

Depending on the complexity of your needs, your data collection process may require specific hardware, like cameras, microphones, GPS devices or others. Cases of LiDAR data collection demonstrate the challenges of gathering 3D data and mapping earth surface, including desert terrains or forest areas. A remote sensing system like LiDAR makes those tasks possible, but data-gathering teams will need helicopters or airplanes equipped with a scanner, camera and GPS receiver to acquire data about hard-to-reach locations.

Gathering data, however, might be only half of the job: your next steps will be data processing and verification, which is vital for confirming the accuracy and value of the data.

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