Automated evaluation of online mapping platforms

Web mapping services have been offered by many companies. To choose an appropriate online mapping platform, it is important to be able to quantify and compare the quality of the different platforms, in different geographic areas. Most previous research comparing the quality of online maps has used a manual approach. Manual quality evaluation is labor-intensive and difficult to replicate in new geographic areas or using new online map providers. In our research, we have developed a framework and a set of automated tools for evaluating the quality of online mapping results. We use the online map provider APIs to perform repeatable queries then compare the results to reference data, which could be gathered by ground survey or based on external sources. In this paper, we explain our methodology and present example results for two test areas, a highly urbanized area and an area in a provincial town.