A data model for pedestrian routes

Digital geographic platforms like Google Maps or Bing Maps provide user-friendly interfaces for navigating through cities. Although, these apps are used daily for shortest paths calculation within the urban centers, they were designed with an emphasis on the needs of motor vehicles and therefore pedestrian routes have only been considered as an add-on option. For that reason, current pedestrian navigation services provide routes based on road networks as they are well defined due to the popularity of car navigation systems on one hand and the lack of pedestrian data (including streets, sidewalks, curb ramps, elevation data, and construction permit information) on the other hand. However, road networks do not adequately represent the paths that pedestrians use. Furthermore, for people with limited mobility, planning a route using a wheelchair in urban centers is very difficult due to lack of information regarding accessibility along the route. To this end, better data on pedestrian sections are needed to improve safety, comfort, and convenience of pedestrian movement. This process requires a carefully developed methodology for modeling pedestrian routes. This paper introduces a structured approach to develop a simple model of pedestrian data that captures all required information and facilitates the design of user-friendly interactive navigation systems. A pilot case is presented for the historical center of Thessaloniki city.