Data formats, filters, and the quality index

You can export HERE map data in various formats, depending on the map product and your needs. Regardless of format, you can search and filter this map data in powerful ways to facilitate common use cases. Similarly, you can access and rate the quality of this data by using software validation rules and ground truth. For details, see the sections below.

Data formats

HERE provides map data in as many as three formats, depending on the product. The HERE Native format customizes Protocol Buffer. The NDS Association defines Navigation Data Standard (NDS) format. And HERE defines the Map Object Model (MOM), with permutations supporting different HERE products in custom ways.

• Protocol Buffer (Protobuf) is a serialization language that HERE customizes to efficiently store many types of map data. HERE provides detailed documentation of Protobuf implementations for supported map products.
• NDS consists of numerous fields to support many types of data in road maps. HERE provides supplemental documentation for the values of fields in map products.
• MOM is a large scale, open contribution logical data model that captures information about reality to display that information on maps. MOM is where most of HERE's source data lives. This data gets published in the other two formats, depending on the map product, as needed by customers.

Filters

Searches of HERE map data let you filter maps by feature—such as topology segments, location, attribute, sub-attribute, and quality Spec Level. For example, you can filter HD Live Map data in a Level 14 tile in San Francisco for stop signs meeting or exceeding the quality and requirements of Spec Level 4.

The output of filters includes highlighting positive search results in a map and listing those results in a table.

Quality index

The Quality Index is a numerical measurement of the confidence HERE has in the correctness of specific map data. Absolute and relative accuracy are two of the explicit measurements, among many, composing the Quality Index.

HERE uses a collection of confidence models with a Quality Index, and a few other factors, to determine the Confidence Indicator for a given attribute or feature of road maps. HERE shares Confidence Indicators with customers. For HERE to approve a map product for production, all the features and attributes in that product must meet or exceed the target Confidence Indicators, relative to ground truth.

For example, the Barrier Classification attribute assigns a type to each and every barrier in the map. Currently supported types of barriers include Guardrail, Jersey Barrier, and Flat Wall. The quality measurement that makes sense in this case is "Error Classification Rate" which measures the percentage of misclassified barriers in the map, relative to reality.

In short, you can filter map data by the types of data and the values of Confidence Indicators.