Improving accessibility for pederstrians with geographic information

Osajulkaisut: Publication 1: Mari Laakso, Tapani Sarjakoski, and L. Tiina Sarjakoski. 2011. Improving accessibility information in pedestrian maps and databases. Cartographica, volume 46, number 2, pages 101-108. University of Toronto. DOI:10.3138/carto.46.2.101 Publication 2: L. Tiina Sarjakoski, Pyry Kettunen, Hanna-Marika Flink, Mari Laakso, Mikko Rönneberg, and Tapani Sarjakoski. 2012. Analysis of verbal route descriptions and landmarks for hiking. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, volume 16, number 8, pages 1001-1011. DOI:10.1007/s00779-011-0460-7 Publication 3: Mari Laakso, Tapani Sarjakoski, Lassi Lehto, and L. Tiina Sarjakoski. 2013. An information model for pedestrian routing and navigation databases supporting universal accessibility. Cartographica, volume 48, number 2, pages 89-99. University of Toronto. DOI:10.3138/carto.48.2.1837 Publication 4: Mari Laakso and L. Tiina Sarjakoski. 2010. Sonic maps for hiking—Use of sound in enhancing the map use experience. The Cartographic Journal, volume 47, number 4, pages 300-307. DOI:10.1179/000870410X12911298276237 Publication 5: Mari Laakso, Hanna-Marika Halkosaari, Tapani Sarjakoski, and L. Tiina Sarjakoski. 2013. User experiences with voice-based descriptive map content in a hiking context. In: Thomas Jekel, Adrijana Car, Josef Strobl, and Gerald Griesebner (editors). Creating the GISociety. Proceedings of the GI_Forum 2013 Conference. Salzburg, Austria. 2-5 July 2013. Berlin / Offenbach, Germany. Herbert Wichmann Verlag, VDE Verlag. Pages 49-58. ISBN 978-3-87907-532-4. DOI:10.1553/giscience2013s49Environments can be made more accessible by offering users information about barriers and objects that might hinder their progress, thus enabling more information about accessible routes. The study delineates the relevant geospatial information needed to describe the accessibility of an environment. Even though laws, acts and regulations give thorough building requirements for creating accessible environments, there is no holistic approach in geospatial data collection to represent the accessibility of geographical spaces. In this thesis, an information model is presented for representing the pedestrian environment. The model allows for accessibility issues and enables the use of geospatial information in pedestrian navigation applications. In addition to data contents and data modelling, this research studies how accessibility can be further increased by way of sound when communicating geospatial information. By communicating the geospatial information via sound the information content can be enhanced and usability improved. Sonic maps create remote access to nature and enhance the accessibility of a place. In this thesis, the fundamental aim was to study the information requirements in particular situations where different kinds of pedestrian users determine which route they might successfully complete. The results of the thesis will help data providers collect and store geospatial information, while taking accessibility issues into account, and hopefully it will raise awareness about issues pertaining to universal accessibility. Albeit, the main effort should focus on building accessible environments; in certain situations, people face hindrances and geospatial information could enable users overcome them.Ympäristöistä voidaan tehdä saavutettavampia tarjoamalla käyttäjille tietoa mahdollisista esteistä tai muista kulkua vaikeuttavista kohteista. Tässä tutkimuksessa määritellään tarvittava paikkatieto, jolla jalankulkijan ympäristö ja sen esteettömyys voidaan kuvata. Esteettömien ympäristöjen luomiseksi on olemassa joukko lakeja ja asetuksia, mutta ympäristön esteettömyyden kuvaamiseksi tarvittavalle paikkatiedolle ei ole määritelty kattavaa keräys- ja esitysmuotoa. Tässä väitöskirjassa esitellään tietomalli, jolla jalankulkijan ympäristö ja sen esteettömyys voidaan kuvata. Malliin voidaan sisällyttää esteettömyyttä kuvaavia tietoja ja se mahdollistaa tämän tiedon käytön myös navigointisovelluksilla. Tietosisällön ja sen mallintamisen lisäksi tässä työssä on tutkittu kuinka ympäristön saavutettavuutta voidaan lisätä kommunikoimalla paikkatietoa myös äänen avulla. Äänen avulla voidaan paikkatiedon määrää ja laatua sekä sen käytettävyyttä lisätä. Äänikartoilla voidaan luoda eräänlainen etäyhteys kuvattuun ympäristöön ja sen avulla lisätä ympäristön saavutettavuutta. Tämän väitöskirjan tavoitteena on määrittää erilaisten käyttäjien vaatima paikkatieto tilanteissa, joissa heidän on tehtävä päätös pystyvätkö he kulkemaan valitsemansa reitin. Tämän työn tulokset auttavat paikkatiedon tarjoajia keräämään ja tallentamaan paikkatietoa niin, että se kuvaa myös ympäristön esteettömyyttä. Ympäristöjen esteettömäksi rakentamisen tulisi edelleen olla ensisijainen tavoite, mutta koska jotkut käyttäjät tietyissä tilanteissa edelleen kohtaavat esteettömyysongelmia, heitä voitaisiin paikkatiedon avulla auttaa väistämään ne

Technical Guidelines to Extract and Analyze VGI from Different Platforms

An increasing number of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and social media platforms have been continuously growing in size, which have provided massive georeferenced data in many forms including textual information, photographs, and geoinformation. These georeferenced data have either been actively contributed (e.g., adding data to OpenStreetMap (OSM) or Mapillary) or collected in a more passive fashion by enabling geolocation whilst using an online platform (e.g., Twitter, Instagram, or Flickr). The benefit of scraping and streaming these data in stand-alone applications is evident, however, it is difficult for many users to script and scrape the diverse types of these data. On 14 June 2016, a pre-conference workshop at the AGILE 2016 conference in Helsinki, Finland was held. The workshop was called “LINK-VGI: LINKing and analyzing VGI across different platforms”. The workshop provided an opportunity for interested researchers to share ideas and findings on cross-platform data contributions. One portion of the workshop was dedicated to a hands-on session. In this session, the basics of spatial data access through selected Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and the extraction of summary statistics of the results were illustrated. This paper presents the content of the hands-on session including the scripts and guidelines for extracting VGI data. Researchers, planners, and interested end-users can benefit from this paper for developing their own application for any region of the world

Enrichment of OpenStreetMap data completeness with sidewalk geometries using data mining techniques

Tailored routing and navigation services utilized by wheelchair users require certain information about sidewalk geometries and their attributes to execute efficiently. Except some minor regions/cities, such detailed information is not present in current versions of crowdsourced mapping databases including OpenStreetMap. CAP4Access European project aimed to use (and enrich) OpenStreetMap for making it fit to the purpose of wheelchair routing. In this respect, this study presents a modified methodology based on data mining techniques for constructing sidewalk geometries using multiple GPS traces collected by wheelchair users during an urban travel experiment. The derived sidewalk geometries can be used to enrich OpenStreetMap to support wheelchair routing. The proposed method was applied to a case study in Heidelberg, Germany. The constructed sidewalk geometries were compared to an official reference dataset ("ground truth dataset"). The case study shows that the constructed sidewalk network overlays with 96% of the official reference dataset. Furthermore, in terms of positional accuracy, a low Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) value (0.93 m) is achieved. The article presents our discussion on the results as well as the conclusion and future research directions

Ontology of accessibility in the context of wayfinding for people with disabilities.

There is evidence that objects in and of the built environment function as barriers or facilitators to accessibility for people with disabilities. Although there are many existing sources of information about accessibility, they often lack clear criteria to describe accessibility, explanations of barriers and facilitators to mobility, and coverage of multiple physical environments. Researchers have argued that wayfinding services (e.g., Google Maps) can help people with disabilities prepare to travel through the built environment, yet current wayfinding services include little to no information about accessibility. This dissertation aims to study accessibility, in the context of wayfinding, in indoor, outdoor and transitional environments for people who travel in wheelchairs and people with low to no vision. To this end, a qualitative ontological analysis of multiple sources of information regarding accessibility was conducted including analyses of important categories associated with accessible wayfinding; different information providers’ views on accessibility; and specific barriers and facilitators to accessibility. The results indicate that (1) people with low to no vision and people who travel in wheelchairs have different core wayfinding information needs, (2) a gap exists between the information people with disabilities and researchers provide on accessibility and that provided by standard guidelines, and (3) conceptualizing accessibility requires capturing actions performed by people with disabilities during every day travel along with characteristics of environmental objects. The resulting ontology could be leveraged to generate new criteria describing accessibility, new routing algorithms, or to attach provenance to existing accessibility criteria. The findings have implications for people who design wayfinding services and collaborative maps and people collaboratively collecting data on the accessibility of specific places