Wanted: New E-Map Apps

Lim Yan Liang – Straits Times Indonesia

If you have always felt that more can be done with maps than just finding one’s way around, you might be right.

The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) yesterday announced a new competition that it hopes will spur application developers to create new uses for electronic maps.

The inaugural OneMap Challenge offers top prizes of 20,000 Singapore dollars (US$15,556) cash each in the two categories of desktop and mobile applications, and a total of more than 70,000 Singapore dollars in cash and prizes.

Participants can tap into data made public by more than 50 government agencies at www.data.gov.sg, and gain access to more than 45 types of themed data, such as the locations of kindergartens or dengue clusters.

By “mashing-up” such public data with community or commercial data, a whole slew of exciting and useful applications can be created, said an SLA spokesman.

“Geospatial information is fast becoming indispensable in our daily life,” said the director of the SLA’s GeoSpatial Division, Ng Siau Yong. “We need to evolve… the development of innovative location-based apps, and the OneMap Challenge is part of our effort to this end.”

Some recent examples of marrying data sets with geographic information include the Park’Live’@SG mobile phone app, which was developed by students from Nanyang Polytechnic and released last June. It uses the SLA’s OneMap platform and data from the National Parks Board to map park attractions, facilities like cycling tracks, and amenities such as restaurants and toilets.

Last week, the OneMap platform – at www.onemap.sg – used data from the People’s Association to show the locations of 64 New Year’s Eve countdown parties all over the island.

Some developers in Singapore say they are already gearing up for the competition.

“We have plans to field a few teams,” said Melvin Tan, a lecturer at Nanyang Polytechnic’s School of Information and Technology.

One of his teams will look into creating a mobile app for large attractions, possibly the Singapore Zoo, said Tan.

For more information on the competition, visit www.sla.gov.sg/OneMapChallenge/

Reprinted courtesy of Straits Times Indonesia. To subscribe to Straits Times Indonesia and/or the Jakarta Globe call 021 2553 5055.