Developing a Pedestrian Route Network Service (PRNS)

Abstract: Route network service is becoming increasingly popular. However, although there are significant amount of route network services there are still limitations especially to pedestrian network services. Pedestrians daily make decision about their navigation choices. Developing a pedestrian route network service (PRNS) involves several factors. During this study the analysis of several routing network services have demonstrated that the geographical data is one of the most important factors in order to develop an own PRNS. Considering the idea of estimation two different datasets for the PRNS were evaluated OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Swedish national road database (NVDB). The use of the OSM dataset for developing the PRNS was made after the comparison between both the dataset. OSM has shown more advantages in terms of completeness of route for pedestrian navigation than NVDB. The OSM dataset was created and stored in the PostGIS database. The implementation of own pedestrian network service is intended to facilitate the developments of new PRNS and analysis and comparison of others existing PRNS. The calculation and collection of the routes to be displayed for the user are performed by extended tools within PostGIS such as pgRouting and PostgreSQL respectively. The dataset’s network topology is related to the distance and determination of route choice by the pedestrian. Thus, Geographical Information System (GIS) is also one fundamental factor used in this study to evaluate and create results. The application was implemented in the city of Lund. One of the limitations developing the PRNS is the lack of documentation for new functions which are released by pgRouting developers. Although OSM provides an essential network for developing the PRNS, some closed residential areas, parks, and open areas are not include on the network limiting the PRNS application. In conclusion the PRNS is a useful application in order to assist pedestrians on their wayfinding in the city of Lund. It is also intended to help further development of new PRNS such as mobile PRNS applications. However, the PRNS must be improved and the dataset network requires updating and expansion for successful operations of the PRNS applications.