Use of graph databases in tourist navigation application

Abstract

Navigation services, such as car navigation services, are widely used nowadays. However current car navigation systems are not fully suitable for the navigational needs of tourists. In contrast with drivers, tourists are not constrained by road networks and can walk in places where vehicles are not allowed to move. As current turn-by-turn navigational instructions to be given to vehicle's derivers are mostly based on street network-based algorithms, this way of navigating is not fully suitable for tourists as they do not only move on streets. In addition, Tourists want to see important feature of the area, no matter they take longer path rather than shortest. They want to get navigated through the most touristic path. In order to provide such tourist-specific navigation services, a landmark-based solution was considered. it calculates a route passing more landmarks. This may help user to visit attractive part of a place. It is possible to provide users with the navigational instructions landmark-by-landmark rather than turn-by-turn. In this application, a graph database is used because of having highly connected data and also need to remove the mapping layer between physical storage layer and application logic layer to have more availability and responsiveness. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.