Web Tourist Route Description Tool

Abstract

This paper presents an application built for the Gazetteer for Scotland (GfS). The application exploits the fact that the GfS has a large and reliable source of data for Scotland that can be distributed geographically. It combines this source of data with the Google maps API v3 and the buffer theory of lines in GIS for constructing a web tourist route description tool for the users of the GfS. An initial questionnaire was used as a guide for building a user-friendly interface for the application and for helping us decide which tools should be developed. The dynamic distribution of the data of the GfS and the national and regional range of the application were developed. To achieve the regional and national range of the application the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) algorithm was utilised with long and small buffer distances. The procedure of building the buffer was intense and it was proven that the construction of the polygon representative of the buffer of the route is a hard problem. For this reason, a different solution was found. A final questionnaire provided feedback given by the users of the GfS. The feedback showed the weaknesses of the system and some nice ideas for further implementation.