THE EUROPEAN DIGITAL ROAD MAP MultiMap AND ITS APPLICATIONS 
Yonglong Xu, Volker Sasse and Karsten Harms 
Robert Bosch Data GmbH, PF 77 77 77, 31132 Hildesheim, Germany 
Email: xu@hi510.decnet.bosch.de 
Commission IV, Working Group 1 
KEY WORDS: GIS, Orthoimage, Application, Vector Data Acquisition, Digital Road Database, Navigation Systems 
ABSTRACT 
This paper describes the European digital road map MultiMap, produced by the Tele Atlas group. First a concise 
introduction to the historical development of the product MultiMap, the corporation itself and the current status of MultiMap 
is given. The product MultiMap is then explained in details, including its data model, data content, data quality, data capture 
and updating concept. The integration of Photogrammetry into data capture is illustrated by the projects Switzerland and 
Austria, where orthoimages were used. On the basis of this open-structured high quality database MultiMap, various value- 
added GIS products can be developed for different applications like intelligent traffic management systems, Tele- 
communication planning and geo-marketing. A typical example is the production of navigable CD-ROM's for the in-vehicle 
navigation systems like Blaupunkt TravelPilot, Mercedes-Benz Autopilot and Audi navigation system. Other examples are 
the in-vehicle navigation system Blaupunkt TravelPilot, Multimedia travel guides, StreetNet, StreetMap and StreetPilot. 
Finally the future work is summarized with emphasis on the rapid completion of the digital road map for the whole Western 
Europe. 
1. Introduction 
The need for electronic mapping of European territory went 
back to the common pan-European R & D projects in the 
field Advanced Road Transport Telematics (ATT) like 
DRIVE |, DRIVE || (Commission of the European 
Communities) and PROMETHEUS (EUREKA), beginning 
from the middle of 1980's, in which Robert Bosch GmbH 
essentialy participated. However, comprehensive large 
scale digital road maps were not available until May 1989, 
when Bosch launched its first in-car navigation system 
Blaupunkt TravelPilot IDS (Lippert, 1995). Since then this 
database, called MultiMap, standing for multi-purpose, 
multi-faceted, multi-information and multi-functionality, has 
being continuously improved and extended by Bosch. 
Recently with the rapid development of fleet and traffic 
management systems, emergency/accident warning and 
alarming systems, travelling planning systems (route, time, 
means), in-vehicle turn-by-turn navigation systems, GIS- 
application for environment evaluation and utility 
management, telecommunication, as well as geo- 
marketing, the demand on digital road data is increased 
greatly. In July 1995 a joint venture Tele Atlas Group was 
founded by Robert Bosch GmbH and the Dutch company 
Janivo BV, in order to speed up the collection of uniform 
digital road maps for Western Europe, develop value- 
added GIS products and finally market them successfully. 
In addition to three offices in Belgium, Germany, and the 
Netherlands, Tele Atlas has currently national offices in 
Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Denmark and Sweden. 
MultiMap is an europe-wide uniform large-scale digital road 
map, produced by Tele Atlas. It contains extremely 
accurate up-to-date geometry and distance information, 
enhanced with a wide range of administrative, 
geographical and traffic information. MultiMap has an 
982 
accuracy of better than 5 meters within metropolitan areas 
and cities/towns with more than 50 000 inhabitants and 25 
meters outside these areas. 
Up to now in Germany the interconnecting road network 
(ICNW) has been completely digitized. In addition the street 
network (STNW) in 13 metropolitan areas all towns with 
more than 50 000 inhabitants have also been collected. 
This covers altogether about 5096 of the total population. In 
Austria and Switzerland, the ICNW and STNW in all 
metropolitan areas (7 areas for Austria and 10 ones for 
Switzerland) have been completely digitized. Digital road 
data for Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Northern 
Italy and the most important municipal areas of France and 
the United Kingdom are also available. At the same time 
activities for collection of digital road data have already 
started for selected cities in Spain, Portugal, Denmark and 
Sweden. 
On the basis of this open-structured high quality database 
MultiMap, a special environment is established, so that we 
are able to create or develop numerous value-added GIS 
products for different applications in private and public 
sectors, with the possibility to integrate external data from 
other sources such as tourism information into these 
products (Fig. 1.1). At present, one of most important 
applications is the so-called ,turn by turn" autonomous in- 
vehicle navigation. For this purpose a series of CD's, which 
have different data content and are appropriate for different 
customers circles, is designed and produced with selected 
information from MultiMap. Besides, our data have been 
used in the projects for traffic planning, management and 
information service. We are providing mobile telephone 
companies with basic data for their telephone network 
planning. Other applications such as fleet management, 
geo-marketing, electronic traveller guiding, desktop 
mapping, yellow pages, Internet on-line service and 
personal digital assistants (PDA) are conceivable. 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B4. Vienna 1996