Google has made maps of the world’s highest mountains, the ocean floor, the Amazon rainforest and even shown us a bit of North Korea. They want to make maps of the whole world, but they have mostly stayed away from the Arctic.
Now, however, Google is starting a very important update to hundreds of years of polar map making – and it hopes that the map will help give a better understanding of life on the permafrost for millions of web users. A small Google team has flown to Iqaluit, the largest town in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. They have taken their warmest winter clothes, many laptop computers and an 18kg telescopic camera that they can fix to their backpacks.
The team spent four days collecting the images and information that will give the isolated community on Baffin Island something that people across the world who live in cities now take for granted. An Inuit mapping expert helped the Google team and curious locals followed them around.
The town of 7,000 people will go on display via Google’s popular Street View application in July 2013.
When Google made maps of other parts of the world it used a special camera on a car roof. In Iqaluit that was not possible, so Google’s map makers walked the town’s snowy roads and trails. Some roads are made of ice and disappear in the short summer months.
The team also walked along part of a 15km road known as the Road to Nowhere, despite warnings about meeting polar bears.
The online map that Google had already created using satellite images was mostly correct, but one road was missing that had been built in the last year.
One difficulty was how to place on the map many businesses and homes that have mail sent to the local post office and not delivered to their address. Putting the PO box addresses on the map would mean the new map would show all the companies, banks and schools in the same place, around the Canada Post building in the centre of town.
About 30 Inuit elders, business people and high-school pupils helped Google to correct this problem. They were given a laptop computer and told how to make sure their homes, shops and meeting places would show up correctly on the map.
The project is more than a novelty. Arif Sayani, the town’s Director of Planning, said that people who are thinking of visiting or moving to the area would be able to use the maps to see the area. It may also help planning decisions in Iqaluit happen more quickly.
The project leader for Google said he hoped to see the work continue in other northern towns. But moving people and equipment around the vast Arctic territory is very expensive. So, in the future, Google might send equipment to the area and ask volunteers to complete the map.