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Interactive cartographic route descriptions

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Abstract

Providing an adequate route description requires in-depth spatial knowledge of the route in question. In this article we demonstrate that despite having travelled a route recently and having much experience of the area in question, an individual may lack such a degree of knowledge. Previous research and experience informs us that a map is an effective tool for bridging gaps in one’s spatial knowledge. In this article we propose an approach, known as an Interactive Route Description, for defining and interpreting route descriptions interactively with a map. This approach is based on the concept of annotating the map in question and allows the aforementioned gap in one’s spatial knowledge to be bridged. An additional benefit of defining route descriptions in this way is that it facilitates automatic parsing and in turn offers many potential applications. One such application, illustrated in this paper, is the automatic transformation to other representations of the description such as turn-by-turn instructions.

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Acknowledgements

Research presented in this paper was primarily funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC) EMPOWER program. It was also in part funded by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) STRIVE programme (Grant 2008-FS-DM-14-S4) and a Strategic Research Cluster Grant (07/SRC/I1168) from Science Foundation Ireland under the National Development Plan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Padraig Corcoran & Michela Bertolotto

  2. Department of Computer Science, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Maynooth, Ireland

    Peter Mooney

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  1. Padraig Corcoran
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  2. Peter Mooney
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  3. Michela Bertolotto
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Correspondence to Padraig Corcoran.

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Corcoran, P., Mooney, P. & Bertolotto, M. Interactive cartographic route descriptions. Geoinformatica 18, 1–26 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10707-013-0175-1

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