Digital Map Applications frequently involve processing large amounts of data on large multiprocessor systems. Typically these systems are not interactive. This paper describes how Grid and Cloud computing can be applied to Digital Map Data modification, publication, community, and other location based services. As the quantity and diversity of data under management grows, client server architecture based on relational technology limits theability to scale not only the number of Map Data clients, but the number and complexity of processes manipulating and extracting Map Data. With theobjective to expand the group of Map Data providers beyond the walls of Navteq to the millions of Map Data consumers, we need a scalable system to support hundreds of thousands or even millions of users. This paper describes a critical piece of the Next Generation Architecture, the Geospatial Grid. The Geospatial Grid will combine and consolidate all Map Data into one virtual repository scaling to millions of users in the most cost management way. The Geospatial Grid is a data management and processing grid of potentially thousands of nodes which provide Map Data retrieval, parallel validation, change event feeds, extraction and transformation of all products, and scalability in a cloud computing like architecture. This paper will discuss the impact of social computing on the concept of Map Data modification and Location Based Systems (LBS), concentrating on the aspects of the Geospatial Grid that impact social computing and Location Based Systems.
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