May 13, 2011 -- Award winning geo-data service provider Europa Technologies has announced a major update to its comprehensive range of global map products.

The 2011.1 release will benefit international clients including insurers and telecom companies who require consistent, definitive global data with extensive support for localisation.

Europa Technologies’ renowned portfolio, as used by Google and other popular Internet-based map services, is ideal as a global Spatial Data Infrastructure (gSDI) for any international enterprise.  Global Insight Plus is the most widely deployed political world map in history, having reached more than 1 in 10 of the world’s population.

As well as map corrections and enhancements, the new update includes major product changes involving points of interest, political and administrative layers, road networks and gazetteer information. 

The release, available for immediate shipping, includes Global Discovery, Global Insight Plus and Global 360, plus industry specific offerings such as Global CRESTA Plus. Some individual map layers, including time zones (with DST to 2012) and world airports are available in the Global Elements product suite.

Company director and founder Warren Vick said: “Global data remains one of our core offerings and our latest release combines changes that will help our broad client base with their geocoding and reference mapping needs.  Our data offers a consistent, definitive source of international information that is ready to deploy on both enterprise systems and the Internet.”

Among the changes, Europa Technologies has ensured that all countries, where applicable, have first level administrative divisions shown in the data along with a new point layer to support enhanced labelling. Second level administrative divisions have also been added to several countries.   

Localisation improvements include new layers supporting the Russian and Hebrew languages. At the same time, all places layers now conform to the internationally recognised language coding standard, ISO 639-2 (T).

Updates to road networks in a number of countries now include many inner cities while a dedicated layer has been added showing the world’s major deserts.

For brokers and insurers, a series of maintenance updates to Global CRESTA Plus ensure continued consistency with the insurance industry standard for risk zone assessment.

New versions of the global map products based on the 2011.1 release are available directly from Europa Technologies or through its global partner network.

For more information on Europa Technologies and its global map data products, visit http://www.europa.uk.com/globalmaps