Many attempts to represent physical spaces as data focus on capturing information that can be used to generate pictorial maps. This data may not be sufficiently comprehensive to allow for algorithmic way-finding, for the construction of representations that work well on small or tiny screens, or for convenient delivery of information in alternative formats that are accessible for people with disabilities. Here we propose that an abstraction of physical space can be created using Node Relationship graphs which mimic natural hierarchy and structure. A web implementation was created for testing the hypothesis, and a turn-by-turn way-finding algorithm was successfully written in JavaScript which recursively submitted web queries to a server containing the modeled data.
By: William S. Carter
Published in: RC25502 in 2014
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