An automatic data integration approach to enrich ATKIS with the VGI of outdoor-sports data

Abstract

With the availability of cheap location technologies, volunteered geographic information (VGI) has become one of the most relevant geographic data sources. In order to make more efficient use of such volunteered data, the VGI is often needed to be integrated to the corresponding ‘traditional’ datasets. This article proposes a specific case of data integration between (a) the topographic dataset of ATKIS maintained by German surveying and mapping agencies and (b) the Alpstein Outdoor-Sport Data (AOSD) primarily collected by numerous enthusiasts (volunteers) of jogging, hiking, biking (incl. road and mountain), skiing, etc. Considering that the VGI of AOSD reveals quite different LODs (level of details) to the traditional topographic dataset of ATKIS, the authors put forward a new approach to realize automatic and accurate data integrations between these two datasets, which demonstrates high performance in a number of large test areas and thereby has been successfully utilized for the real-world data production in the area of Alps, Europe. As a result, the integrated datasets have been published on the website to serve broad masses of outdoor-sports enthusiasts by a German Cooperation, viz. Outdooractive GmbH.