If you’ve been following this blog’s entries about how digital mapping data providers compile their data (see the Surveying category archives), you’ll know that since time immemorial — or at least the 1940s — mapmakers have compiled their road data by driving the roads. But in Wired’s October issue, there’s a story about how Tele Atlas is moving away from that, thanks to their acquisition of GDT, a company founded by Don Cooke that tried to avoid driving when compiling road data:

Adamant about compiling data, instead of looking for it out the window, Cooke started with road classification information from the Census Bureau and determined rough speed limits so he’d have a sense of which routes were most efficient. Next, GDT acquired detailed aerial photography of major cities. “We could look at a street and see which way cars were parked, even tire rubber going into intersections, and deduce 85 percent of the turn restrictions and one-way attributes,” Cooke says.

See previous entries: Thomas Guides, Navteq on KPCC; NY Times: Navteq in New York; Again: TeleAtlas in Berlin; The New Yorker on Maps and Directions; Again: NavTeq in San Diego; Another Profile: Navteq in New York; TeleAtlas in Santa Fe; More on Digital Map Field Researchers; CNet Profiles TeleAtlas; SF Chronicle: Digital Map Field Researchers; Backcountry Mapping; Online Maps’ Foot Soldiers.