KEYNOTE 1


Towards Accurate Open Source Map Services

- Mohamed Mokbel , University of Minnesota (UMN), USA

Abstract

Map services, including routing, searching, and prediction, have empowered a variety of ubiquitous services and applications, including transportation, location-based services, ride-sharing, and delivery industry. Though there is extensive research in academia and industry for developing efficient algorithms for such services, all algorithms have the implicit assumption that the underlying map is accurate. Unfortunately, this assumption is not always true. Maps suffer from all sorts of inaccuracy that significantly impact the accuracy of map services. This talk will go through our recent efforts to significantly boost the accuracy of current and future map services, through exploiting two orthogonal directions. First, building accurate maps, with a broad definition of a map that goes beyond the traditional map topology to a more rich definition that includes traffic-related metadata, without which, most of map services will have low accuracy. Second, developing new techniques that would increase the accuracy of query processors over the accurately built maps. The talk will also serve as a call to the community to join arms and collaborate in building the most comprehensive worldwide open source accurate maps and map services.

Bio

Mohamed Mokbel (PhD, Purdue University, MS, BS, Alexandria University) is a Professor at the University of Minnesota (UMN). Prior roles while on leave/sabbatical from UMN include Chief Scientist of Qatar Computing Research Institute, Founding Technical Director of GIS Technology Innovation Center in Saudi Arabia, and multiple times Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research, USA. His research interests include database systems, spatial data, and GIS. His research work has been recognized by the NSF CAREER Award, ACM SIGSPATIAL 10-Years Impact Award, VLDB 10-Years Best Paper Award, and four conference Best Paper Awards. Mohamed is the past elected Chair of ACM SIGSPATIAL, current Editor-in-Chief for Springer Distributed and Parallel Databases Journal, and is/was on the editorial board of ACM Books, ACM TODS, VLDB Journal, ACM TSAS, and GeoInformatica journals. He has served as PC Co-Chair for ACM SIGMOD, ACM SIGSPATIAL, and IEEE MDM. Mohamed is an IEEE Fellow and ACM Distinguished Scientist.