Kolloquium Geoinformatik Location Based Services (LBS) – Cases of navigation and wayfinding

Personalized navigation and way-finding for outdoor and indoor environments are prominent research areas of Location-Based-Services (LBS). Current research cases include innovative concepts for car navigation and pedestrian navigation. We present the idea to provide drivers a routing suggestion, which avoids complicated crossings in urban areas. Based on the topological characteristics of the dataset, measured by the number of nodes, we classify crossings into a continuum reaching from easy to drive to difficult to drive. The user can choose to compute alternative routes. This methodology is one step in building a full inexperienced drivers routing system. A case study for indoor routing explores the situation within the Technical University Munich's main building. Currently available data on floor footprints, points of interests (POIs), indoor-landmarks, pictures and a routing graph for the building are used to investigate a routing service. A betweeness centrality measure can be used to compute a hierarchical indoor routing network. Unlike in car navigation, turn restrictions and one way roads are to some extent obsolete in an indoor environment. The betweenness measure has been used in other studies to investigate the importance of certain edges within a network.