CREATION OF A DIGITAL INTERACTIVE TOURIST MAP WITH THE CONTRIBUTION OF G.P.S. AND G.I.S. TECHNOLOGY TO VISUALIZATION OF THE INFORMATION

G. Kariotis¹, E. Panagiotopoulos¹, G. Kariotou¹, N. Karanikolas²

1 - Technical Educational Institute of Serres, Department of Geoinformatics and Surveying, Magnisias Road, Serres, Greece

2 - Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Department of Cartography, Thessaloniki, Greece

karanik@topo.auth.gr

The creation of a digital, interactive tourist map, which can be transformed according to users needs, is the main focus of this research.

The digital map will provide information of tourist interest mainly. Information is classified to groups of historic, religious, cultural, environmental, and athletic interest.

Area of interest is constitute of segments of three countries of the northeastern Balkan Peninsula and can be described as follows: South from the imaginable line which connects Sofia with Varna (Bulgary), to Thasos and Samothraki (Greece). East from Sofia to Serres (Greece) and including the whole European part of Turkey.

The cartographic background is enriched with information relative to road, rail and hydrographic network, all the towns and villages of three countries, and using the ability of portraying data to four levels of territorial information. The fourth level of information is information of points of interest selected by the user. Map has the ability to recommend particular paths giving information (historic, environmental, services, photographs, etc.) for all the points of interest on every path.

Mapping and all the process of the data will succeeded using software from G.I.S. and mapping enriched with software of multimedia and internet applications.

Data of the fourth level of information are collected sampling with the use of G.P.S. equipment and using photographs and video, so that the user will be aware of his destination.

Main focus of this research is the creation of a map which can be modulated into three formats, a multimedia format, an internet digital map and finally a mobile map which can be used using a mobile phone. The holistic combination of new techniques and tools of Geoinformatics enriched with the use of multimedia visualization of information gives to the map new abilities of geographic documentation.

This paper is a part of the research program “Human environment and documentation with the technology of G.I.S. Spatial development, roads and paths of the Balkan”, which is financed by the act: “Archimedes: Support to research groups of Technical Institutes of Greece” and is elaborated from a research team of Department of Geoinformatics and Surveying in Serres, Greece.