7 EVALUATION
The first version of the application server was tested
using a web-application that was used by the city of
Ghent to navigate to various Ghent University loca-
tions, during the 200 years of Ghent University cele-
brations. Following the enormous support to the ini-
tiative, the android application was formally released
and was made available for download in the Android
Play Store from the 17th of October in order to per-
form a first hand evaluation on user engagement and
performance. The app was limited to the region of
Ghent for feedback and development purposes, but
can easily be expanded to any area. The app had
an extremely welcoming opening with approximately
1000 unique users logging in and using the app in the
first two months (as can be seen in Figure 8). This in
turn proves the necessity for a more personalized rou-
ting application in performing day to day running and
walking activities. There were people of different age
groups and the feedbacks obtained from them were
greatly positive.
Figure 8: Active Users graph for the first evaluation period.
Between the first two months, there was on an
average 105% increase in the utilization of running
activity of the app. User feedback was crucial in ra-
ting unclassified roads, which makes the application
constantly better. The tool for making POIs was also
an advent of feedbacks. There is a lot more feedback
coming in and evaluations are instrumental for the fu-
ture prospects of the application. A more comprehen-
sive user study has also been planned with the current
set of users to obtain a more introspective review of
the application from the end users.
8 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE
WORK
In this paper we have introduced a mobile application
which allows generation of dynamic routes starting
from any point in the city based on user preferences.
The application has been rolled out for public usage
and its functionalities have been limited to the city of
Ghent for evaluation, testing and developmental rea-
sons. Currently the application contains a collection
of POI datasets covering a variety of themes ranging
from nature (parks, water) to tourism (monumenten)
and special POI themes. In most cases, the graph and
R-tree based algorithm generates nice smooth routes,
leading to very positive user feedback on the dynamic
routing aspect.
Currently, the application supports only one city -
Ghent. In the future it would be expanded to multiple
cities and eventually the whole country. Another wor-
king point would be adding a theme for safety (nega-
tive and positive points of interest) and more interes-
ting points in general. Also, currently the functiona-
lities have been limited to walking and running tasks
but could also be extended to other activities invol-
ving similar routing requirements.
REFERENCES
Contours (2017). Walking in scotland, england, wales, avai-
lable at: https://www.contours.co.uk/.
Cormen, Thomas H.; Leiserson Charles E.; Rivest Ronald
L.; Stein, C. (2001). Section 24.3: Dijkstra’s algo-
rithm. Introduction to Algorithms (Second ed.). MIT
Press and McGrawHill., page pp. 595601.
Gavin Maurice, Ghosh Bidisha; Pakrashi Vikram; Bar-
ton John O’Flynn; Brendan Lawson, A. (2011).
A cycle route planner mobile-app for dublin city.
Irish Transport Research Network Annual Conference
(ITRN2011).
Guttman, A. (1984). A dynamic index structure for spatial
searching. Proceedings of the 1984 ACM SIGMOD in-
ternational conference on Management of data, pages
47–57.
Hochmair, H. H. and Fu, Z. J. (2009). Web based bicycle
trip planning for broward county, florida.
Hrncir, J., Song, Q., Zilecky, P., Nemet, M., and Jakob, M.
(2014). Bicycle route planning with route choice pre-
ferences. ECAI 2014, pages 1149 – 1154.
Hrncir, J., Zilecky, P., Song, Q., and Jakob, M. (2015).
Speedups for Multi-Criteria Urban Bicycle Routing.
In Italiano, G. F. and Schmidt, M., editors, 15th
Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transpor-
tation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS
2015), volume 48 of OpenAccess Series in Informatics
(OASIcs), pages 16–28, Dagstuhl, Germany. Schloss
Dagstuhl–Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik.
MapMyRun (2017). Plan each stride and learn from every
route, available at: https://www.mapmyrun.com.
Mitchell, R. (2013). Is physical activity in natural environ-
ments better for mental health than physical activity
in other environments? Social Science & Medicine,
91:130 – 134.
Olafsdottir, G., Cloke, P., and Vgele, C. (2017). Place,
green exercise and stress: An exploration of lived
icSPORTS 2018 - 6th International Congress on Sport Sciences Research and Technology Support
104