Personalized accessible wayfinding for people with disabilities through standards and open geospatial platforms in smart cities

Abstract

Of the many features that smart cities offer, safe and comfortable mobility of pedestrians within the built environment is of particular importance. Safe and comfortable mobility requires that the built environments of smart cities be accessible to all pedestrians, mobility abled and mobility impaired, given their various mobility needs and preferences. This, coupled with advanced technologies such as wayfinding applications, pedestrians can get assistance in finding the best pathways at different locations and times. Wayfinding applications comprise two components, a database component containing accessibility data, and appropriate algorithms that can utilize accessibility data to meet the mobility needs and preferences of all individuals. While wayfinding applications that provide accessibility on both permanent (e.g., steps) and temporary (e.g., snow) pathways are becoming available, there is a gap in current solutions. There are two elements in the gap, one is that the accessibility data used for finding accessible pathways for people with disabilities are not compliant to the widely agreed upon and available standards, another is that the accessibility data are not available in free and open platforms so that they can be used by developers to develop personalized wayfinding applications and services. To fill this gap, in this paper, we propose a new extension in CityGML with accessibility data. We demonstrate the benefits of the new extension by testing various route options within a city. These route options clearly show the differences between commonly (shortest and fastest) requested and produced pathways and accessible pathways that are feasible and preferred by people who are mobility impaired, such as wheelchair users.