Ride Sharing Service Grab is Messing up the World's Largest Mapping Community's Data in Southeast Asia

Remote teams incorrectly overwrote data developed by volunteer mappers in Thailand. TechCrunch reports: Grab, Southeast Asia's top ride-hailing company, has hit a roadblock in its efforts to improve its mapping and routing service after running into trouble with OpenStreetMap, the world's largest collaborative mapping community, through a series of blundering edits in Thailand. Grab, which gobbled up Uber's local business in exchange for an equity swap earlier this year, has busily added details and upgraded the maps it uses across its eight markets in Southeast Asia. Accurate maps are, of course, essential to a smooth ride-hailing experience for Grab's 125 million registered users. Without accurate location details, ensuring that drivers and passengers can easily rendezvous becomes nearly impossible.

Grab's effort to improve the never-ending quest of more accurate maps involves a multi-input approach that uses Google Maps as the base with Grab adding in its own information -- 'points of interest' cultivated through customer feedback and groundwork -- and other public or licensed information. However, what appears to be a focus on speed has seen it suspend all activities in Thailand -- Southeast Asia's second-largest economy -- after it was found to have overwritten data developed by OpenStreetMap (OSM) with inaccurate edits that were created by a remote team based in India. Established in 2006, OSM's mission is to 'make the best map data set of the world' and it makes its data, which is developed by more than two million volunteers from across the world, available for use without charge.

An India-based team from GlobalLogic, an outsourced software firm contracted by Grab, made dozens of edits in recent months that overwrote information created by OSM members, who voluntarily map streets by visiting them in person. Grab suspended work in Thailand by the GlobalLogic team after OSM members complained about numerous incorrect edits in OSM forum posts. Unlike the hobbyist mappers who collect data in person, the Grab contractors used satellite imagery to 'correct' local map details in Thailand which, in fast-changing cities like Bangkok, meant that their work was incorrect because it relied on out-of-date sources.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.