A Framework and a Tool for Semantic Annotation of POIs in OpenStreetMap

Abstract

Current mobile systems for assisted navigation have limited effectiveness in satisfying user needs. The information content supporting location-based service discovery and path calculation is usually shallow. Semantic-based technologies can allow to overcome these limitations, by exploiting accurate and meaningful descriptions of locations, Points of Interest (POIs), road segments and environmental conditions. We present here a general framework leveraging an enriched cartography, which may be useful not only to enhance travel satisfaction and safety, but also to regulate vehicle efficiency, traffic and environmental impact.The availability of annotated map data is a crucial requirement to make practically viable such a proposal. Unfortunately, the majority of available systems is developed upon closed and proprietary solutions for both maps and software applications, so third parties cannot extend their functionality. To go beyond this restriction, the framework presented here is based on open standards and tools: in particular, it leverages Semantic Web technologies and crowd-sourced maps available from OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org/), enriching nodes and POIs with semantic annotations to enable innovative Location Based Services (LBSs) for traveling users. Particularly, the paper proposes a general method for storing semantic annotations into OpenStreetMap road nodes and POIs. A user-friendly software tool is also presented for editing annotations through a fully visual user interface, based on simple drag-and-drop operations, implemented as a plugin for the popular open source JOSM OpenStreetMap editor (http://josm.openstreetmap.de/), that will make any OpenStreetMap contributor capable of enriching maps with semantic information. Finally, a semantic-enhanced navigation tool is proposed, capable of exploiting the enriched cartography. Early users’ evaluation assesses the effectiveness of such a proposal.