The AskWhere app is a tool for supporting the process of selection of travel destination, in reference to wide set of criteria. We have divided all of Europe area into 5 km hexagonal base grid and assigned climate, air quality, landscape, services availability, accessibility, popularity and costs information to each cell. The user defines the criteria of the tourist destination he is interested in, and the application finds a hexagon that meets them and presents it on the map.
Comprehensive database covering the variety of planned tourism destinations selection criteria was curtail to achieve the major functionality of the application. The system uses specific form of information storage, namely unified reference hexagonal grid with thematic information referred to each of the cells. Applied hexagonal grid’s resolution is 5km and it covers only lands. The grid coverage, that is also the platform’s service area, includes following countries and dependent territories:
- Albania
- Andorra
- Austria
- Belgium
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Faroe Islands
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Gibraltar
- Greece
- Guernsey
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Isle of Man
- Italy
- Jersey
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Moldova
- Montenegro
- Netherlands
- North Macedonia
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- San Marino
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom
AskWhere features & functionalities
- Selection of touristic destination on the base of user’s preferences;
- Evaluation of touristic destination;
- Benchmarking of touristic destinations;
- Accessing shared content;
- Planning a trip around destination surroundings;
- Planning a travel to destination point;
- Searching for services in destination area.
Variety of flexible filtering parameters
Easily find places over Europe that meet your criteria of expected weather, landscape, access to local services.
The AskWhere application provides a support in the process of selection of travel destination in reference to vast set of criteria. The service region was divided into 5 km wide cells, described with information on climate, air quality, landscape, services availability, accessibility, popularity and costs. Accessing comprehensive description of all potential destinations over Europe increases likelihood of making informed and reasonable decision.
The dashboard consists of the map window displaing polygons of the main reference hexagonal grid that stores thematic description of each of the cells. The backdrop is OpenStreetMap providing rich context information.
The filter allows to select step by step all the criteria that are important to for the user and set their values for desired. During session each filtering operation conducted by user is stored as filtering history. User can rename the filtering settings, store them or remove permanently. With use of permalink applying readable syntax selected filtering settings could be shared. Permalinks allows recipients to recover the filtering and familiarise with destinations selected originally during filtering.
Destination description could be accessed by the user by clicking selected cell. Detailed destination description is being displayed in the side panel with use of actual values, but also icons, ideograms and charts to assure proper readability and compactness of the description.
Routing functionality is mainly tailored for planning trips to explore destinations and their surroundings. There are three modes of routing available: driving, walking and cycling. Users select start and destination points of a trip as well as up to ten via points. The application generates trip route and displays it on the map, and in the panel route elevation profile is provided. The route is available for downloading as a GPX file that can be use in mobile devices, i.e. smartwatches.
Usage of all tools and functionalities is described at the Manual page.
The project is co-financed by the European Space Agency under the Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP).