Finding Top-k Optimal Routes with Collective Spatial Keywords on Road Networks

As more detailed POI (Point of Interest) information has been incorporated into road network, routing has evolved from finding paths from one place to another, to satisfying users’ needs (keywords) along the trip. However, the existing solutions either only support one keyword per POI, or require a fixed visiting order, or only provide one option to choose from. Therefore, we study the top-k Optimal Routes with Collective Spatial Keywords (k-ORCSK) problem, which is the most general keyword-aware routing problem that supports multiple keywords, arbitrary orders, and top-k results. To solve this problem, we apply an enumeration framework and reduce the complexity by contracting non POI-related vertices and taking the keywords into account. After that, we propose a best-first path expansion method DA-CSK based on deviation to convert the enumeration paradigm from the distance-oriented to the keyword-oriented. Finally, several optimization techniques are provided to further improve the query efficiency. Extensive experiments conducted on multiple real-life road networks show that our method can provide higher quality results more efficiently.