Blatten reloaded

June 30th, 2025 | by Marius Dupuis

Posted On June 30, 2025

_{(3 min read)}

Nature acts in a wide speed range. If we focus on our planet and our core subject geodata we see our data getting outdated by activity that lies somewhere between continental drift and volcanic eruptions. One recent event that made the existing geodata of almost an entire village obsolete was a big landslide in Blatten, Switzerland, on May 28, 2025. Fortunately, geologists had been able to predict this event, and the village was evacuated well before being covered by millions of cubic meters of rock and ice.

Reality check

After such an event it’s time to redraw the maps of the region. We were wondering who is doing this at what speed. A check of publicly available maps a month after the landslide gave quite different results.

First, a picture of the real situation, downloaded from the website of SwissTopo:

Now for the (alternative) realities:

Apple maps

Everything looks great on the mobile phone, and we even get a chance to see beautiful pictures of the gone village that would make us want to book a vacation there (hotel names are still shown if you zoom in). The only thing that might be an indication of trouble is that you cannot create a route with the destination Blatten.

Google Maps

Same situation. Nothing unusual on the map or on the satellite image. But planning a route is impossible, too.

HERE maps

Almost the same as with Apple and Google but on top of it you can still plan a route:

OpenStreetMap

Only when it comes to crowd sourcing do we see a good example of swarm intelligence: OpenStreeMap shows the new situation with the full extent of the landslide area and even with the small lake that formed in the north-east of the former village.

Routing is possible, but only to the nearest accessible point, no longer to the village itself:

Update rates

Now the question is how long we should expect changes to become visible in the geodata to which we as civilians have access. We asked the usual AI-assisted search engines (in this case: Bing) and got some interesting results:

Google Maps updates its data with the following frequency:

Urban Areas: Every 1-3 years.

• Rural/Remote Areas: Every 5-10 years or more.
• High-Priority Locations: As frequently as every year if significant changes are detected.
• Satellite Images: Updated constantly, but changes may not reflect immediately.

This ensures that users have access to relatively current information based on their location.

Yes, we assume that the landslide in Blatten was a „significant change“ and are looking forward to seeing the new data in a year.

Finding out about Apple maps is trickier since there doesn’t seem to be a straight answer available. All we found were entries to Apple user forums with Apple support stating that changes may take some time since the corresponding change requests – mostly from users reporting inaccuracies or outright errors – need to be verified first. One can only hope that verifying the landslide in Blatten does not require too much effort for a background check. The chances it is fake news are relatively low.

When asking about HERE maps, we get the information that providers like TomTom and HERE update their data on a quarterly basis. We should have a chance to verify this statement in two months from now.

For OpenStreetMap, we saw that information was rapidly updated. Whether this creates trust or just proves that data can be manipulated quickly is a different story (note: we are not trying to imply that you should not trust OSM). For changes in geodata which are well-proven by independent sources, it is a great advantage to have a community of highly engaged people making sure everything is up to date.

We have no doubt, though, that any data serving “higher” purposes than the routing of everyday people from A to B gets more attention with higher update frequencies. Military maps in conflict zones, for example, are expected to show every inch of the latest trenches before engagement takes place.

And, frankly speaking, having to choose between the personal need for a highly accurate map in a war zone and an outdated map of a once beautiful Swiss village, we definitely prefer the latter.