June 22, 2011 -- Geodata solutions provider Europa Technologies has launched a hosted mapping service to help the insurance industry react quickly to emergency situations.

viaEuropa Express, unveiled at the ABI Biennial Conference in London, is a new online DaaS (Data as a Service) offering that brings the most detailed cartography of Great Britain direct to the desktop, web and mobile devices.

The service bridges the gap between raw data delivery and fit-for-purpose mapping.  It extends the existing capabilities of the viaEuropa service to give the insurance industry rapid access to authoritative, large-scale digital mapping, centred on a specific location. 

The challenge faced by the industry is that the actual location for which mapping is needed in response to an event is not known in advance. Reactive work has therefore to be done in a timely and cost-effective manner. 

Traditionally, the only way to plan for this would be to hold a large-scale topographic map dataset for the entire country. This is expensive to license and presents significant challenges in handling the huge data volumes required. 

With viaEuropa Express, insurers can acquire maps for a specific area of interest and receive the data, delivered as a service, by the next business day. The area of interest is selected, costed and ordered through a web-based interface. As a result, they are able to respond rapidly to an event whenever and wherever it arises. 

This simplifies the integration of geographic information by delivering it directly into existing mapping applications, including support for Microsoft Bing Maps, ESRI, MapInfo, Google Maps, Mapflow and popular business intelligence platforms.

viaEuropa Express delivers Ordnance Survey products such as the flagship OS MasterMap (Topography Layer and Integrated Transport Network Layer) and OS VectorMap Local. 

Europa Technologies director and founder Warren Vick said: “viaEuropa Express provides a cost-effective and rapid response solution that caters specifically for the needs of the insurance industry which, by the very unpredictable nature of emergency and disaster situations, needs a solution that is reactive and delivered in a timely manner. This new variant of the service allows an insurer to have access to full GB coverage for Ordnance Survey detailed mapping datasets but to license just the data they need when they need it for a given situation. It provides access to high quality Ordnance Survey mapping without the burden of data conversion, data management, cartographic styling and dedicated server hardware and software.”

viaEuropa Express is the second major offering for insurers from Europa Technologies this year. In January, the company announced a significant upgrade to its digital CRESTA zone product. The new release included high resolution zone boundaries for a number of key countries and a places gazetteer of over 850,000 locations pre-coded with CRESTA zone and sub-zone.

For more information on viaEuropa Express, visit www.viaeuropa.uk.com/express

Editor’s note

Europa Technologies is an Ordnance Survey Licensed Partner with more than 20 years’ experience in the field of digital mapping. Our products and services include digital map data supply, software development, map data management, map tile rendering, consultancy and hosted map services.

For interactive mapping applications, Europa Technologies renders Ordnance Survey digital data compatible with Microsoft Bing Maps, ESRI ArcGIS Desktop and Web Mapping APIs, Google Maps, MapInfo Professional, OpenLayers, Oracle MapViewer and OS OpenSpace.

For developers who already use Microsoft Bing Maps or Google Maps, we can advise on seamless methods of replacing map tiles for selected areas with customers’ own internal or licensed data. Cartography can be developed to replicate the appearance of an existing map or implement a completely new style.

Europa Technologies’ international customer base includes many of the world's Global Fortune 500 companies plus several missions of the United Nations.

For more information, visit www.europa.uk.com.

Media enquiries to Europa Technologies marketing and communications manager at Email Contact or call 01932 645555.