Proceeding of 2018 IEEE International Conference on Current Trends toward Converging Technologies, Coimbatore, India

Google Maps Based Travel Planning &

Analyzing System (TPAS)
W.G.R.M.P.S. Rathnayake
Faculty of Information Technology,
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
[email protected]

Abstract- With the immerging technologies like GPS summary of some of them are mentioned below.
and Interactive map applications, travel and tourism
industries have been accelerated a lot. And also the A - location-based services and Google Maps based
individual travelers are getting benefited by cloud information master system for tour guiding.
services like “Google Maps”. But still there are some
limitations like travel destination sorting and location This research proposed an intelligent information master
based travel recommendations to the user. This system for tour guiding using multi-agent systems and
research proposes an interactive trip organizing ontological system databases. This proposed system is
service with enhanced travel information services and more accurate with top experiments so solved traditional
travel recommendations. This system is capable of issues of travelling guides. The system has been
proposing a positive or negative score to a specified demonstrated with tourism and travel guiding features [2].
travel plan by analyzing weather conditions and
distances. Initially user can input the starting place B - Visualizing Our Futures: Using Google Earth and
and intended travel destinations even the user doesn’t Google Maps in an Academic Library Setting
know the optimum route of reaching those
destinations. The System can analyze user inputs and According to the research, most of present academic
generate shortest path covering all the travel libraries have been used google maps and google earth for
destinations and generate the travel plan including the wide variety of purposes. That means, most of users are
route. Then user can check for weather details of all still take data and geographical details from google maps
the places as weather conditions, temperature, wind and google earth to manage GIS based systems.
speed and humidity. After, the system gives its According to the research, google earth and google maps
suggestion about the suitability of the travel at the can be used in many subjects even not regarding GIS
specified time. based purposed. As example, to evaluate students talking
“French as a second language” in University of Toronto
Keywords- Google Maps, Weather API, GIS, Distance Mississauga, they used google earth to find French
Sorting, Optimum path language libraries, restaurants and community centers [3].

I. INTRODUCTION C - Web-Based Zoomable Pathway Browser Using

KEGG Atlas and Google Maps API
Google Map is developed to find, locate and mark places,
find directions, durations and many other Geographical In this research, Pathway is an intuitive browser that has
Information Systems (GIS) based tasks. been designed with providing a large-scale metabolic
pathway map based on the popular KEGG Atlas layout,
Geographical Information System is a decision support with the addition of gene and enzyme nodes. Pathways
System which has geo spatial data (e.g. maps) to analyze has a better user friendly interface with integrated search
spatial data and relationships between them. [1]. capabilities and exploratory facilities [4].

When using Google Maps to find a path, it provides the II. RESEARCH APPROACH
path according to the user inputs (destinations), but that
may not be the optimum path. This research provides a When an user wants to plan the trip with several
solution to this issue which is a better path for user inputs destinations, Google Maps provides the output according
(destinations). And also this system provides weather to the user inputs only (Fig. 1). The user has to search for
details and suitability of the travel at the specific time. each destination separately to retrieve distance and
duration in Google Maps. And also the user has to enter
Regarding Geo Spatial data and GIS based systems, there destinations in the correct order according to the distance
are several geographical systems has been developed. A to get the travelling route.

978-1-5386-3702-9/18/$31.00 © 2018 IEEE 1

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 Proceeding of 2018 IEEE International Conference on Current Trends toward Converging Technologies, Coimbatore, India

When the user enters starting point and destinations, this destinations to a 2D array and sort the array according to
system (TPAS) creates the travelling route in the correct the distance between starting point and each destination.
order (Fig. 2) according to the distance and provides the
route in text format. So the user can understand which The distance sorting technique is a simple quarter circle
place to visit first, second, third and so on. technique. Which means, if the destinations distribution is
a spread one like a mesh (Fig. 3), there is no any problem
to understand which the closest location is, next closest
Google Maps Approach
location is and so on.
User Input Directions
1 Starting Point
Destination 1
4
Destination 2

Destination 3 2

Destination 4
3

Destination 5 5 End Point

Fig. 3 – Example for a mesh spread destination

Fig. 1 - Google Maps Approach distribution

But if the destination distribution is a circle spread

TPAS Approach distribution (Fig. 4), there will be a problem which is the
User Input Directions end point may be the closest point to the starting point.
1
Destination 1 Starting Point
4 End Point

Destination 2

Destination 3 2

Destination 4
3

Destination 5 5
Fig. 4 – Example for a circle spread destination
distribution

Fig. 2 - TPAS Approach If the end point is closer to the starting point, the result
map will be an incorrect one because the system will
In this system, it first access to Google Maps through the decide to go to the end point at the beginning. To solve
Google Maps API. The system has two google AJAX [5] this problem, the quarter circle technique can be used.
based search boxes to find locations. First one is for the
starting point and other one is for destinations. The user
can enter the starting point and each destination with
locating the point and user can add locations where
planned to visit.

Then the system takes the starting point and all the

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 Proceeding of 2018 IEEE International Conference on Current Trends toward Converging Technologies, Coimbatore, India

Starting Point Starting Point

D- Distance
Closest End Point
D1
D5
Closest
1st Quarter Destination 1 D2 D4

D3 Destination 5
Closest Destination 2
Destination 4
Destination 3

Array D
Fig. 5 – The Quarter Circle Technique 1
Fig. 6 - 1st part of the Distance Sort
In the quarter circle technique, the circled destination
distribution will be divided into four equal parts In the first part, array takes only the nearest destination
(quarters). Then find the closest destination from the distance to the starting point. If took all the distances and
starting point and take that quarter which that closest sort them out, the second destination will be the
destination belongs as the first quarter. And set the path Destination 5 (Fig. 6) because after D1, D5 is the shortest
from starting point to that destination. Then that distance from the starting point. But actually the second
destination sets as the starting point and performs the destination should be the Destination 2.
same principle within the quarter. After finishing the
quarter, the path will be set within the quarter. Then there In the second part, the starting point is the previous 1 st
is no any circle distribution anymore and it can find which Destination. Then get the other distances between the 1st
one is closest, and next closet is from the rest (Fig. 5). destination and each other destination (Fig. 7).

According to the above example, within the first quarter,

always skip the end point as not closest because when Starting Point
D- Distance
each destination becomes the starting point, there is
another closest destination to them than the end point.
After the quarter, the next closest destination will become
the last starting point and the end point will be the longest
destination to it. Destination 1 D9
D6 D8
When it comes to a common scenario, Destination 5
Destination 2 D7
Destination 4
If x = No. of total points to be become a starting point,
Destination 3

Array D D
Next part will be described an example with 6 locations 1 6
(points), how the array will be filled by the quarter circle Fig. 7 - 2nd part of the Distance Sort
technique.
In the third part, the starting point will be the closest
There are 6 locations in the example, so the number of destination to the previous destination which is out of the
points will be become a starting point is 3 (6/4+1=2.5 and quarter (3rd point), so it can be taken distances directly
the upper integer of 2.5 is 3). This +1 is for the last from it to each destination left (Fig. 8), and then sort all
starting point which is out of the quarter. So there are the distances in ascending order in a 2D array which has
three parts to sort the destinations. both distance and the city name. After that, it provides
city names (destinations) in the order. Then the user will
First part, get the distance between starting point and the have an accurate route with the lowest total distance and
nearest destination to the starting point by calculating and duration.
sorting every distance between the starting point and each
destination.

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 Proceeding of 2018 IEEE International Conference on Current Trends toward Converging Technologies, Coimbatore, India

Starting Point The proposed System (TPAS) is running with two APIs
D- Distance
and two internal modules. With these APIs and modules,
the entire system design diagram can be modeled as
follows (Fig. 10).
Destination 1
D12

Destination 2
Destination 5 User
D1
D10 1 Destination 4 Input Destinations
Destination 3
Destination
Google Maps API Details
Arra D D D1 D1 D12 (Distance)
y 1 6 0 1
rd
Fig. 8 – 3 part of the Distance Sort
Sorting Module
After getting the accurate route, user can see the path map
with each waypoint. The description panel shows distance
Ordered Destinations
between each destination, duration and the total distance,
duration. After getting the path map, user can check for
weather details. The system checks for weather condition, Google Maps API
temperature, wind force, humidity and weather (Way points)
description of each destination and show them.

A function will count the number of destinations with bad Ordered Destinations
weather (Lightening, Thunderstorm, Shower rain, light
rain, rain and heavy rain) and check whether that number Weather Details
Open Weather
is greater than to 50% of total number of destination. If API
so; the system will say that this is not a suitable time to Weather Details
travel there due to bad weather. In that situation, system
will check for weather forecast for another 7 days for each Suitability Checking
destination. Then perform the same function mentioned Module
above and tell whether the upcoming week is suitable for
the travel or not. Suitability

Output
This is a system where several APIs bringing together and
analyze travelling details. Users can enter destinations and User
check maps through google maps API and check for
weather details using weather API. So the entire system
can be modeled as follows (Fig. 9). Fig. 10 – Context Diagram of TPAS

IV. IMPLEMENTATION
Input Correct
Destinations Route The system is based on JavaScript and HTML since this is
a web system. To develop the system, JQuery, CSS and
AJAX have been used. This is a completely front end
Current system so login to the system is not required. HTTP GET
Travelling
Weather method is used to pass data between pages.
Map
Details
First, user enters the starting point and destinations in the
system interface. The system consumes Google Maps API
Weather Suitability
to get map data, directions and destinations [6]. Then the
Forecast of the
Sorting Module (Fig. 10) sort destinations in ascending
Travel
order and keeps the sorted data set in a text box. Then an
Fig. 9 – Flow Diagram of TPAS AJAX call sends the sorted data set to the direction map
page through HTTP GET method with one parameter
III. SYSTEM DESIGN which is the sorted data set.

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 Proceeding of 2018 IEEE International Conference on Current Trends toward Converging Technologies, Coimbatore, India

In the direction map page, JavaScript, “location.search” population [9] and still those users have not above feature
method catches the GET parameter and build an array. in Google Maps. So the proposed system will help those
Then the user can view the ordered path with descriptions users to find the optimum route and weather details.
provided by Google Maps API. After that, an AJAX call
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