150,000 km of 360° street-level mapping, one route at a time
Leading global mapping platforms · Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Jordan · 2021 to 2026
The requirement
A navigation map is only as good as its last drive. Road layouts change, junctions are rebuilt, names are assigned and reassigned, and a map that was correct two years ago will send a driver the wrong way today. Keeping a country's map current means physically driving every road with calibrated capture equipment, checking the data as it comes in, and re-driving anything that falls short, run as a standing operation across an entire national road network and repeated independently in each country the client operates in.
What TGO did
- Securing country-level approval for 360° street-view capture from the relevant ministries in each country, a sensitivity-led process, since most authorities do not readily grant permission for road capture involving cameras, and clearance has to be obtained before any driving plan can be submitted
- Preparation and submission of route-specific driving plans for approval, worked to each ministry's own lead time; in several locations plans had to be submitted a full week ahead of the drive
- Weekly coordination with the approving ministries throughout the contract: reporting the routes completed that week and submitting the following week's routes for clearance
- Identification of restricted or sensitive areas encountered during planning and capture, reported to the client so those roads could be removed from the mapping scope
- End-to-end handling and supervision of the capture programme in each country, run as an independent operation with its own fleet, team and equipment rather than one shared setup
- Between one and five teams operating in parallel within a country, scaled to route length and delivery deadline
- Country-specific vehicle fleets and manpower, each built and equipped for that market's terrain and requirements
- Installation of panoramic street-view capture equipment on the vehicles, NC Tech-type camera systems paired with LiDAR for depth, with the configuration selected per country and per contract
- Training for drivers and mappers on equipment operation, route discipline and data capture standards
- Live monitoring of operations across every fleet, with in-field troubleshooting of camera and sensor faults
- Quality control on every drive, with redrives triggered whenever data fell short of the client's specification
- Data processing, copying and upload to cloud platforms for client access, alongside physical data shipping to client offices where required
- Operations across a full range of terrain, from sand desert to mountain roads and urban and rural networks, without a drop in data quality
- Delivery scheduled and tracked against client targets, so coverage landed on time in every country
The 360° capture head
Five countries, five operations
Global navigation and mapping platforms qualify their field contractors before awarding any work, and re-qualify on every renewal. Being trusted to run independent operations across five countries, each with its own fleet and team, is that qualification passed repeatedly rather than once.
Why it matters
Running one mapping fleet is a logistics operation as much as a technical one: vehicles, trained crews, working cameras and LiDAR, cleared routes, and a QC process that catches bad data before it reaches the client, all at once and on a schedule. Running five, each with its own approvals process, its own fleet and equipment, and up to five teams working in parallel, is a different order of coordination. The work started in Oman in 2021 and has since extended to Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Jordan, across terrain ranging from desert sand to mountain passes, and is now expanding into Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia.
