Enhancing Campus Navigation with Contextual Mapping Integration

Navigating a university campus can be a daunting experience for new students, leading to confusion, missed classes, and frustration. Recognizing this challenge, I contributed to a project aimed at improving wayfinding at CQUniversity by integrating contextual navigation into myCQU, enabling students to seamlessly find their classrooms through Google Maps.

Project Overview

Students were frequently getting lost on campus, impacting their experience and ability to reach classes on time. This project aimed to solve this issue by integrating a custom navigation system into myCQU, allowing students to easily locate their classrooms with a “Find Room” button that provided real-time, location-based directions using Google Maps.

Outcome

This project significantly enhanced the student experience by eliminating confusion and streamlining campus navigation. By leveraging geospatial data and real-time mapping, we empowered students to confidently navigate their university environment, improving both accessibility and efficiency.

My Contribution

My role focused on researching and implementing the geospatial mapping technology needed to provide precise room-based navigation across multiple CQUniversity campuses. Through stakeholder engagement and technical evaluation, we determined a custom-built solution would best serve the needs of students and integrate effectively with existing systems.

I developed a virtual campus map by creating and utilizing KMZ files (a format for geographic data storage) and ArcGIS, ensuring compatibility with Google Maps across all CQU locations. This process involved:

  • Researching various technology stacks for indoor navigation, including digital twins, GIS solutions, and custom development
  • Engaging with stakeholders to align the solution with student needs and university infrastructure
  • Developing KMZ-based geospatial mapping to enable room/ Building navigation
  • Collaborating with the web development team to integrate navigation into myCQU

Scope

  • Researching and evaluating indoor navigation solutions
  • Stakeholder engagement to assess needs and feasibility
  • Developing a virtual campus map and .kmz and ArcGIS
  • Integrating navigation into myCQU
  • Passing location to Google Maps

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