Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Stop Manually Digitizing Data

Geospatial data is a crucial source of truth for understanding the physical world. It drives valuable insights across a wide range of sectors, powering transportation planning, stormwater management, climate resilience, infrastructure development, public safety, telecommunications network optimization, and more. However, obtaining the high-quality data needed for these operations has traditionally been a labor-intensive and time-consuming process, often requiring geospatial professionals to spend countless hours on manual digitization.

Fortunately, technological advancements have transformed this process, making it easier than ever to access high-precision data. In this blog, we highlight the top five reasons to move away from manual digitization and explore how Ecopia AI’s (Ecopia’s) comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date geospatial data is powering decision-making across industries to help create more efficient, safe, and resilient communities. 

The limitations of manual digitization  

Manual digitization has long been a trusted method for obtaining accurate geospatial data. However, it is often time-consuming, costly, and challenging to scale, particularly when applied to large areas such as entire cities, states, or even nationwide.

To obtain high-precision geospatial data, GIS professionals may decide to construct their own database through manual digitization. For example, if a municipality is looking to collect land cover data for stormwater planning, they may choose to conduct on-site surveys and data collection by field teams, which is then processed, digitized, and integrated into the municipality's database. Alternatively, a municipality may collect data digitally using geospatial imagery and then manually digitize features into classified vector layers.

Both approaches can be highly resource-intensive and tedious, sometimes taking years to capture just one feature. For instance, it took the GIS team in Collier County, Florida, four years to digitize driveways across their county. The time-consuming nature of the process means that by the time the data is ready to use, it may be outdated and no longer reflect real-world conditions. Additionally, to maintain accuracy over time, the process will likely need to be repeated periodically, leading to further resource demands.

How Ecopia’s AI-powered geospatial data is transforming mapping

Fortunately, with Ecopia’s data, GIS professionals no longer need to compromise on speed or accuracy. Ecopia's artificial intelligence (AI)-based technology ingests high-resolution geospatial imagery to extract comprehensive land cover data that includes any real-world features needed for analysis. The result is a comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date digital representation of critical infrastructure and natural features for strategic planning. 

The following sections will highlight how Ecopia’s AI-powered geospatial data surpasses manual digitization by delivering highly accurate data with greater efficiency, and significant cost and time savings—revolutionizing strategic planning in the process.

1. Unmatched data quality and accuracy 

Ecopia’s AI-based mapping systems digitize real-world features with the level of accuracy of a trained GIS professional, but with the scale and speed necessary for our constantly evolving world. For example, in California, Ecopia worked with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority (SBCTA) and Fehr & Peers to digitize the County’s comprehensive transportation network for multimodal and active transportation planning. This involved digitizing 17 advanced transportation features, including sidewalks, turn lanes, medians, and more across an area of 20,000 square miles. By partnering with Ecopia, San Bernardino and Fehr & Peers found that Ecopia’s AI technology could accurately extract all the necessary features for county-wide transportation planning, including even the most detailed transportation elements, while maintaining a level of precision you’d expect from meticulous manual digitization. Moreover, Ecopia was the only data company that SBCTA found that could deliver the exact features they were looking for at the high level of quality they required. You can learn more about the project here.

2. Time savings and increased efficiency

Ecopia’s data not only offers exceptional accuracy but also significantly boosts time and operational efficiency. In the San Bernardino example previously mentioned, Ecopia produced the advanced transportation features across the 20,000 square mile region 45x faster than previous manual digitization efforts. 

Ecopia’s data has also enhanced efficiency in other communities. For example, in Detroit, Ecopia’s AI-based mapping expedited impervious surface mapping by 18x to support stormwater planning in the city. Prior to working with Ecopia, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) relied on a time-consuming manual digitization process. Manual digitization efforts to update impervious surface data took 12-18 months, resulting in outdated information by the time it was ready to use which ultimately led to inaccurate stormwater utility fee (SUF) calculations and over $5.6 million in missed annual revenue. 

Ecopia was able to deliver a comprehensive dataset to DWSD in just 6 weeks, covering distinct pervious and impervious surfaces, including buildings, paved and unpaved roads, sidewalks, driveways, parking lots, and more. For more details on the project, click here. 

3. Cost savings and budget optimization

Manually digitizing features in-house is not only time-consuming but also costly, requiring valuable financial resources. Similarly, outsourcing data production can also be expensive. With Ecopia, you gain access to high-quality data without the need for manual digitization, enabling your team to focus on analysis and decision-making. 

Ecopia’s data has proven to deliver significant cost savings across various projects, helping teams optimize their budgets without compromising on quality. For example, the City of Jacksonville partnered with Ecopia after looking for a cost-effective and efficient solution for detailed land cover data to support stormwater management planning and analysis. After evaluating various data providers, Jacksonville ultimately opted for Ecopia due to its competitive pricing and efficiency, finding that Ecopia’s price per parcel of detailed land cover data was 84% lower than other vendors. Ecopia’s AI-powered systems generated comprehensive land cover data with distinct pervious and impervious surfaces, including buildings, roads, driveways, tree canopy, and more. By utilizing this data, the City of Jacksonville significantly enhanced the accuracy and efficiency of their stormwater analysis and SUF planning. Discover more details about the project here. 

Another notable example of how Ecopia's data helps teams reduce costs comes from a transportation project in California. Ecopia provided high-precision data to the City of Mt. Shasta and Alta Planning + Design to enhance their transportation planning efforts. Ecopia’s mapping systems quickly generated detailed inventories of sidewalks and crosswalks across the region, providing essential data to help evaluate the comfort and safety of pedestrian and cyclist transportation networks. Ecopia was able to quickly create that baseline data at a price point that was unmatched, and it was estimated that the labor cost would be 3x as much as it was if it weren’t for Ecopia’s data. You can learn more about this project by clicking here.

4. Data standardization and consistency 

One of the key challenges with manually digitizing features is the potential for data inconsistencies. When multiple individuals are tasked with interpreting imagery and digitizing features, variations in training, experience, and interpretation can lead to discrepancies in the data. This lack of standardization can result in inconsistencies, ultimately compromising the accuracy and reliability of the results. For example, before partnering with Ecopia the DWSD team in Detroit faced challenges interpreting imagery which made it difficult to update the original dataset. As a result, DWSD had to recreate data each year.

With Ecopia’s AI-powered systems, data is generated through standardized processes, ensuring uniformity. This eliminates the variability introduced by different manual digitization methodologies, providing high-quality, reliable data that can be trusted for decision-making and analysis. By partnering with Ecopia, DWSD was able to achieve consistent, uniform data creation and seamless updates, enhancing both the accuracy and efficiency of their operations. The DWSD team found that Ecopia’s ability to create highly-accurate data was critical, but they also found significant value in Ecopia’s capacity to maintain the dataset.

5. Data currency and freshness 

As we’ve seen, creating data through manual digitization is time-consuming. This means that maintaining up-to-date geospatial data is a significant challenge for organizations relying on manual digitization, as the process often takes too long to reflect real-world changes. This delay can hinder effective decision-making, especially in dynamic environments. With Ecopia’s AI-powered systems, data currency is no longer a concern. Ecopia’s systems are able to leverage fresh geospatial imagery to deliver updated map content that accurately reflects the real world, making it easy to detect changes over time and ensure freshness.

Access to high-precision data that can be easily updated is crucial, particularly in applications like emergency response routing. As mentioned previously, Collier County, Florida, spent four years manually digitizing driveways for their detailed emergency response routing application. The absence of reliable data forced the county to undertake this labor-intensive process, covering thousands of address points and access roads across the county's 2,300 square miles.

To address the challenges associated with manual digitization, Collier County partnered with Ecopia. In less than a month, Ecopia accurately digitized over 132,000 driveways and access roads across the county, far outpacing the GIS team's four-year-long manual effort. Since integrating this data, the Collier County GIS department has seen significant improvements in emergency response times. Discover more details about this project here.

Geospatial data plays a crucial role in enhancing community safety and efficiency, and using accurate, up-to-date data is key to achieving this. Ecopia's partner network of leading geospatial imagery providers enables Ecopia to update map content and detect change as soon as fresh imagery is available, ensuring maps and insights never grow stale. Unlike manual digitization, this approach ensures that data remains accurate and relevant without the need for time-consuming, labor-intensive efforts, empowering organizations to make informed decisions based on the most up-to-date information available. 

Why now is the time to stop manually digitizing data

Ecopia’s AI-powered geospatial data enables stakeholders to expedite project timelines and achieve their objectives more seamlessly than with traditional manual digitization methods, saving time and money while increasing efficiency. 

If you're ready to streamline your workflows and leverage Ecopia’s comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date data for your projects, get in touch with out team today.