Most of Europe has been available as a detailed digital map for some time. But some parts of the continent are more of a challenge for digital map makers than others, especially large and widely-spread countries like Norway, Sweden and Finland. The enormous size of these countries, and the fact that a large part of the road network is unusable for much of the year, makes mapping them anything but a simple task.Accurate
The U.S. company NAVTEQ announced yesterday that it has succeeded in charting the complete road grid of Norway and Sweden, and this means that there is now reliable mapping material available for all of Scandinavia. Until now, the most northern parts of Norway and Sweden were not complete, and the error rates in the map data were also quite large."Completion of Detailed Coverage for the Nordic region is a significant accomplishment in our commitment to support our customers in their application efforts," stated George Filley, Vice President of Product Management for NAVTEQ. "Because our Norway and Sweden maps are now 100% collected and verified, our customers can have confidence that their turn-by-turn navigation systems will accurately and efficiently route users across the entire region".
Ferry
NAVTEQ put a lot of effort into checking the map data for the Northern European countries. The combined road networks of these countries add up to no less than 860,000 kilometres, and charting them was made harder by the conditions found in the area. The terrain is often very rough, with lots of mountains and many small, interconnected islands. The weather conditions also make surveying difficult. In addition to all that, this region has lots of ferry connections, so the departure and arrival locations of all of these ferries have had to be entered into the database.Norway and Sweden’s newest maps also contain 27,000 POI’s, divided into more than sixty categories, the largest being for petrol stations, with 4,300 entries, restaurants (4,000 entries) and hotels (1,400).
Well done Navteq 
