Indoor Mapping with OpenStreetMap

OpenLevelUp is an interactive map which uses OpenStreetMap data for indoor mapping. The map allows you to find your way around inside buildings, level by level, by selecting different floor levels. The map is particularly useful for navigating your way around large buildings, laid out on many floors, such as shopping malls or museums.

When you are zoomed out on OpenLevelUp buildings which have level by level mapping available are identified by a heat-map layer. Zoom-in on one of these buildings and the numbered floor levels will appear down the side of the map. You can now explore inside the building, floor by floor, simply by selecting one of these floor levels.

The map of each floor shows the locations of different rooms, stairways, escalators and other amenities (depending on what has been mapped on OpenStreetMap). All of the features which are shown on the map can be clicked on to reveal more details or to click-through so that you can add more details yourself to the feature on OpenStreetMap.

Indoor Mapping with Mapbox GL

Mapbox GL's extrude property can be used to extrude polygon shapes to create interesting mapped visualizations of data in 3D. It can be used to extrude and color building footprints, as in this Toronto Zoning Map. It can also be used to represent census data in 3D, like in this Population Density Inspector map, which shows the number of people living in each census block in America in 3D. Vox even recently used the extrude property in their National Snowfall Map to visualize the last 24 hours of snowfall across the whole of the USA.

The extrude property has probably been most used to create 3D maps of building height and use. The University of Michigan for example has used the extrude property to create a 3D map of its campus. However Rooms with Mapbox-gl.js is much more than just a building height map. It actually uses the extrude property to create a useful indoor map of all the university's buildings.

By extruding each floor level separately the university has managed to create a map which the user can use to select and view each floor layer individually. This enables the user to view a floor plan of any floor level of any university building. Rooms on the map have also been colored by function, such as office, lab, classroom and restroom.

Rooms with Mapbox-gl.js is a neat demonstration of how the extrude property can be used to create an indoor map. The next stage would be to use map labels to add room information. The map would also benefit from a room search function or a drop-down menu which allowed you to select and find individual rooms on the map.

The Indoor Mapping Plug-in

This indoor mapping plug-in for the Leaflet mapping platform looks very interesting. The plug-in provides an easy way to create indoor maps with different floor levels.

I haven't had time to play with the Leaflet Indoor plug-in myself but it looks to be fairly straightforward. If you want to see the plug-in in action then you can view an example map that uses Leaflet Indoor in this demo.

As I understand it Leaflet Indoor allows you to create your Indoor Map using any method that you want, for example mapping out rooms and corridors with polylines and polygons. The Leaflet Indoor documentation suggests that the data for your floor plans should be created in a GeoJSON feature collection.

Once you have a floor plan you then assign it a level property. This level property is then used by the Leaflet Indoor control component to show the correct floor plan when a map user selects a floor level.

Street View at Prayer

Outside Street View of Lincoln Cathedral

For a while Google Maps has steadily been increasing coverage of inside Street View for businesses, stores and museums. It is now also capturing Street Views inside a number of cathedrals.


The main nave of Lincoln Cathedral

In the UK Lincoln Cathedral has indoor Street View. For almost 300 years after it was first built Lincoln Cathedral was the tallest building in the world. In Google Maps you can now explore the main nave and the Chapter House.


The view from Salisbury Cathedral roof

Salisbury Cathedral also has some beautiful indoor Street Views. Salisbury Cathedral has Britain's tallest spire. Exploring the Street View in Google Maps you can get a wonderful view looking up into the inside of the spire.


Looking up the Salisbury spire 

New York's opulent St Patrick's Cathedral also has indoor Street View. The cornerstone of St. Patrick’s Cathedral was laid in 1858 and her doors first opened in 1879.


Click on any of the images above to view the Street View depicted on Google Maps

Google Indoor Maps Now on the Desktop

Indoor floor plans can now be viewed on the desktop version of Google Maps. One of the great features of Google Maps on mobile phones has been the ability to view indoor floor plans. Now you can view the same indoor maps on Google Maps for the desktop.

If you want to know which venues have floor plans available on Google Maps you can check out the list here. A great bonus for Google Maps API developers is that you don't have to do anything to get the indoor floor plans to appear in your apps, as they are now part of the base Google Maps map tiles.

Unfortunately at the moment you can only view the main floor of a venue and don't have the ability to change floors as you can on Google Maps for mobile. I'm guessing this feature will be eventually added as it exists in some indoor Street Views, for example in the White House Street View imagery.


In other news the Google Map Maker team has introduced badges for contributors to Google Map Maker. The badges can be won for a number of different contributions, from editing on Map Maker to attending Map Maker events.

You can view a full list of the available badges on the Google Map Maker website.

Bikes, Museums & Airports

It has been another busy week for the Google Maps team with some great new additions for U.S. and European users.

Last week Google announced indoor maps for Android devices in the UK. More than 40 train stations, museums, department stores and shopping centres in the UK now have indoor floor plans on Google Maps.

Yesterday Google also released twenty indoor floor plans of museums in the U.S.. The new floor plans include the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cincinnati Museum Center, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History ,17 Smithsonian museums and a zoo!

Today Google has also released bike paths and routes for Google Maps in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.


In many of these countries bike directions are also now available.

If you live in Australia there is no need to feel left out as bike lanes and bike directions have also been added to Google Maps in Australia.

Welcome to Indoor Google Maps

Indoor floor plans and maps are now available for many airports and shopping malls for users of Google Maps 6.0 for Android.

Where available detailed floor plans automatically appear when you open Google Maps in your Android phone. As usual the 'blue dot' will appear on the floor plan to show your current location within several meters.

When you move floors in a building the floor plan will even automatically update to display which floor you’re on.

Initially floor plans are available for a number of malls, airports and transit stations in the U.S. and Japan. You can see a detailed list of participating locations here.

Google have also created a Floor Plans website where business owners can upload their floor plans and make them available on Google Maps.

Via: Google LatLong