#CompletetheMap Helsinki

A challenge to photo map Helsinki and collect useful map data before the darker months.

We’re teaming up with the local Helsinki community to bring you the next #CompletetheMap challenge. This is a great opportunity to focus the efforts of the community while the days are still long and the weather…Nordic pleasant.

The idea of #CompletetheMap is to divide a city into zones and then fill them in by capturing street-level imagery throughout the city. As you move through the city, your imagery of roads, bike lanes, and footpaths help to complete each zone and eventually #CompletetheMap. Helsinki is actually very well covered for a major city, but this challenge will allow us to gather fresh imagery for areas that need it, over a specific period of time. The data that we gather during this time can then be used for map editing and local government purposes.

Anyone living in Helsinki or passing through during this time is welcome to join the #CompletetheMap challenge. Read on for more info on how the challenge works and how you can contribute.

Follow the action here.

The Challenge

Helsinki has been divided into a 4 x 3 grid. To participate in the challenge, simply capture imagery of streets, bike paths, and sidewalks between August 25th 00:00 Helsinki time and September 17th 23:59. The contributor with the most images in each zone when it is marked as complete will win the zone. The contributor who wins the most zones wins #CompleteTheMap Helsinki.

If you’d like to take part, charge you cameras and start capturing images in your area. Good luck!

The Rules

How do I enter the challenge?

Anyone capturing within the grid will automatically participate in the challenge. You don’t need to sign up for your images to be counted.

The Grid

We will be checking coverage every day and assigning a color to each zone that represents the percentage of roads and paths for that zone. Red will represent 20% or less of coverage, yellow between 20% and 80%, and green greater than 80%. Only images captured from day one of the competition (August 25th) will be counted.

Rankings & Updates

We’ll be maintaining a live page with the results that you can visit any time here. As usual, you’ll also be able to get updates on Twitter and Facebook.

How to win

The winner of each zone will be the contributor with the most images in that area when the zone is marked as complete (goes green). The overall winner will thus be the one to collect the most zones by improving coverage in that area. The competition will end when all the zones go green or on September 17th, whichever comes sooner.

To keep the challenge as fair as possible, we will make sure that images taken in each zone are useful. When necessary, we’ll manually update the zone to make sure it accurately reflects the state of image coverage in that area. You’re welcome to send in feedback to tell us which zones need to be adjusted.

Invite Friends

If you would like to invite your friends to take part in the challenge, all they have to do is capture within the grid area and they will automatically appear on the leaderboard. If they want to stay updated, make sure they subscribe to our email updates and follow the #CompletetheMap hashtag on Facebook and Twitter.

And we’re off!

Charge your phones, get your action cameras out, and #CompleteTheMap Helsinki! Have fun exploring the city.

P.S. Nominate your city here if you’d like to see the challenge in your neighbourhood. We’ve also open sourced the code for the grid and leaderboard so that you can run the challenge yourself at any time.