Spatial database and routing : a design and implementation for better journey management

Abstract

Online mapping applications have evolved exponentially in their level of detail and precision during the last few years. This improvement built up the interest of integrating a routing system between the various places of interests that a user would like to visit. As a result the entire routing work load would be transferred to the machine. Thus, the user would not waste any time try to find which route to take. The main objective of the system is to allow a user to indicate the starting point, points of interests and ending point for his walking route plan. The spatial region that has been chosen to focus my study on was Valletta. The user would be able to select which places to visit and in which order he wants to visit them. The system then automatically plan and display a route to be followed on an interactive and deployable map (i.e. used in your favorite Smartphone application). The routing functionality is going to be influenced by the steepness of the roads. The steeper a road is the more effort is considered to be needed in order to traverse it. Therefore, such roads would be less preferred to be chosen than others which are not that much steep. Results obtained from the routing functionality concluded that the technique used, managed to calculate an encouraging and adequate result of routes.