WizRD: A Personalized Wayfinding Platform for Enhanced Urban Navigation

Wayfinding platforms help users navigate both indoor and outdoor environments in real-time. Many existing systems primarily optimize either distance or time, neglecting other important factors such as personal comfort, perception of safety, or emotional responses to the environment. To overcome these limitations, we designed WizRD, a new wayfinding platform that allows users to express their preferences and obtain routes that optimize them. This is made possible by the fact that WizRD can automatically acquire and integrate new data sources, also enabling the definition of customized routing algorithms that take into account both data sources and user preferences. In addition, to support decision-making, WizRD includes a visualization dashboard that facilitates users’ understanding of how different environmental factors affect the recommended routes. Finally, the platform supports multimodal navigation by integrating vehicle interchange stations called LUMIs. A prototype implementation developed for the area around the University of Milano-Bicocca demonstrates the platform’s ability to handle multimodal navigation and to address the specific needs of vulnerable people, such as the ones with impaired mobility, women, and children.