eMapSite complete Mapping Kiosks

Issue date: 25th February 2002

eMapSite is pleased to announce that three prestige kiosk installations are all now live in London and the South. Visitors to GIS 2001 at Earls Court will have seen our range of innovative mapping solutions for interactive touch-screen information kiosks. eMapSite, operators of the leading online distribution portal for digital mapping, is now delighted to announce the whereabouts of these kiosks.

Camden Lock Information Centre opened for business in October 2001. As you extract yourself from the market this Sunday in search of a cup of coffee, dive into the Grade II listed building next to the lock and sample a latte, a light lunch and a look at the latest in map centric public information points. Four touch screen interfaces afford access to over 5,000 locations within the Borough of Camden enabling you to find a museum to visit, a specialist retail outlet, an ATM or even somewhere else to eat, all through the easy to use map and airphoto interface showing your favourite haunts as you've never seen them before. And the kiosk tells you how to get between all these places by bus too!

Lyndhurst, England: the Ordnance Survey recently completed the three month trial of their mapping kiosk at the New Forest Tourist Information Centre. eMapSite developed a custom map application to allow viewing, browsing and printing of user-centred custom maps on A4 and A3 size paper. This ground-breaking move initiated by Ordnance Survey enables map users to print out tailor-made mini versions of Britain's most popular maps in a matter of minutes using the interactive touch screen kiosk. Users print off a full colour map of their area of interest at one of four map scales. The kiosk is believed to be the first in Britain to print high quality maps from map data served directly from the web. Users can search by postcode or place name before printing out exactly the area they want.

Southampton, England: the Ordnance Survey has taken delivery of a variant of the printing kiosk for use in their Business Centre and in external marketing activities. Any time you visit their headquarters or they visit your region (or exhibition) keep an eye out.

eMapSite are now undertaking kiosk redevelopment based on feedback from the pilot and this new solution is due for delivery to Ordnance Survey in March 2002.

Kiosks are at the forefront of the revolution in providing free-standing, always-on interaction to target audiences. To date all eMapSite kiosks target the broad tourist/visitor group; in synthesising data from Ordnance Survey, getmapping, Bartholomew Mapping Solutions and e-street, eMapSite mapping applications deliver information relevant to the chosen audience.

These mapping solutions can be supplied as a complete turnkey solution or as part of a networked or web-based solution, and can be configured to suit a myriad of needs, ranging from tourism through to public services.

The benefits of kiosks are legion:

• Easy and extended public access to information requiring no computer skills
• Higher standards of customer service (for reduced inputs)
• Flexibility to easily broaden range of services
• Cost benefits of self-service
• One location for comprehensive local information
• Potential data capture medium
• Centralised remote data management keeps them all up-to-date while Internet connectivity allows for software updates etc
• Potential revenue medium through sponsorship and advertising including brandin
• Scaleable and extensible, reliable and flexible
• Robust, secure, proven hardware platform
• Variety of interaction (touchscreen, keyboard, console, screen keyboard)
• Using mapping for easy information retrieval

Kiosk solutions, by their very nature, vary according to their content, location and application. Each is individual according to its use; for example, integration with third party information in Camden, comprehensive template based map printing interface for Ordnance Survey and so on. eMapSite harnesses a range of tools, mapping and third party data (from the client or elsewhere) to create customised solutions according to user need.

In the quest for e-government at all levels kiosks or "citizen links" have become one of the mechanisms with which to communicate with disparate and distributed stakeholders and interest groups; as is evidenced by the recent surge of interest in eMapSite's services, mapping greatly assists this process.

Note for Editors:
About eMapSite.com
eMapSite was established in 2000 and provides online solutions and consultancy services related to the acquisition, distribution and management of digital geographic data. eMapSite products and services include kiosks, data hosting, data sourcing, web services, data processing, custom applications development and applications service provision for geographic content. eMapSite’s customers are businesses that use geographic data to manage assets and facilities, plan networks, analyse markets and provide services, such as utilities, telecommunication companies, national and local government, construction, civil engineering and environmental consultancies, web site owners and property services.

For further information, please contact:
Email: justin.saunders@emapsite.com Office Tel: 0118 973 6883