Finding the right track – defining guideposts with JSON

Many different organisations have to deal with the management of guideposts – especially in alpine regions. Sometimes all the data about the guideposts is managed in databases and GIS-Systems, often no digital data management is in use. In the first case mostly internally developed databases/applications are used and there is no open technical “standard” for storing “guidepost-data” and EXCHANGING it. In some regions – like in Tyrol – governmental standards for the guideposts (“the hardware”) are available (how guideposts have to look like – e.g. size, classification of difficulty, …). Based on the idea that around the world guideposts have some elements (direction, name of target,…) in common, we started to work on a modern technical standard…

guidepostJSON

… based on JSON with the option to easily store data in NoSQL-databases like MongoDB and build an application around it based on web-technologies. The advantage of such a standard would be the option to exchange the data open and standardized. In the worst case everyone is able to store the data file-based and edit the JSON-files with a simple text-editor. We also try to publish a reference-JSON for the tyrolean guidepost-system as a branch of the simplified one. So, stay tuned – our brains are working and the reference-JSON’s are coming soon. Ideas and comments are always welcome.

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