Visualization of Crowds from Indoor Positioning Data

Abstract

In recent years, a wide range of Indoor Positioning Systems (IPSs) have been developed through both research projects and as commercial systems. IPSs can be utilized in many different ways, such as providing wayfinding capabilities, tracking of humans and equipment, and for identification of human processes. An area where further investigation is needed is how indoor positioning data collected through an IPS can be used to aid facility managers. The goal of this research is to develop a prototype application that utilizes collected positioning data, and use it to investigate how such data is able to aid facility managers.

The research was conducted according to the design science research methodology, and qualitative research approach was used. The artifact developed is a web application that is able to process large amounts of collected positioning data, and use it to visualize crowd distribution and movements within a building. The ap- plication visualizes crowds by generating a heat map of the distribution of crowds on top of a map of Gløshaugen campus at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). This application was evaluated using relevant stakeholders, to assess if the utilization of indoor positioning data was perceived as useful by facility managers.

The results from this research presents an investigation of the perceived useful- ness of collected positioning data from a facility managers perspective. Potential stakeholders for the prototype application and the collected positioning data is presented, as well as an evaluation of the application with two different groups of stakeholders. The results from the evaluation shows that there is a clear interests in the use of collected indoor positioning data among facility managers.