Mappalachian: Indoor Mapping For Appalachian State University

Online mapping applications such as Apple Maps and Google Maps might be able to help students and visitors to the Appalachian State campus find buildings, but cannot help them find specific rooms inside of buildings. Ask any freshman student how important that is as they frantically search Rankin Science or Anne Belk Hall for their first class of the semester. Mappalachian, the application that this thesis describes, is an iOS application that uses technology available in the iOS SDK to show both the exterior and the interior spaces of buildings on campus. The interface presents itself just like any other mapping application would but when zooming in on a specific building, the map changes to show the interior space on each floor level. All of this data has been gathered using real-world floor plans and coordinate data in a program called Java OpenStreetMap Editor so that they can be converted into a format readable by the application. Any user can search for a room in a building by its room number which then will focus and highlight the specified room on the map. For students, the app also can retrieve their current schedule, allowing the user to search for rooms based on their schedule rather than the room number.