Nowhere To Hide With New Indoor Navigation

We wondered when someone would collaborate with Jack Bauer and give commercial real estate some CIA-caliber mapping technology. That company is IndoorAtlas, which maps the interior of a building, to within six feet, using its “unique magnetic fingerprint,” according to a recent NYT article. (That factors in distortions in the Earth’s magnetic field and distance from the ground.) And as location technology and crowdsourcing join forces (like directions app Waze), this could make fewer and fewer places behind closed doors. Think of the ways this hyper-efficient mapping—and subsequently, design—of space could be applied: Showing shoppers the quickest way to navigate a grocery store or big box to gather the items they need, or helping employees locate items in warehouses or government archives.

This smartphone-available technology (above) has broad-based implications across all asset classes. (It also makes corn mazes a lot easier to navigate.) It’s an instant feedback loop for retailers who are testing or revamping their spaces (once they view changes in traffic flow around specific items); it would inform the design of everything from micro-units to hotel rooms; and it could provide valuable industrial efficiencies in today’s same-day delivery climate. As is the case with most of big data’s new technologies, privacy comes into question. Currently, IndoorAtlas will measure and store a building’s magnetic fingerprint for free—it costs $99/month if you’d like to keep the info private—and the CEO expects there will eventually be Yelp-style user scanning compiled to a public database. Tell marissa.oberlander@bisnow.com how you think this technology could affect our industry.