Interest in developing GIS application.

[Martin Ameskamp]

> I am looking for assistance in developing a program that will allow me 
> to enter my location in a particular city as well as my destination in 
> that same city -- at which time the computer will merely give me the 
> quickest route to reach my destination.  

        [ ... ]

> I am fairly new to the world of GIS and I would appreciate email from 
> anyone who is either interested in working with me on this project or 
> any suggestions on where I should begin to look (ie, do I use data from 
> Tiger or Grass, does it make sense to develop such a program from 
> scratch, etc.).

        Well, considering that several multinational consortia are
        working on this problem with astronomical budgets, I think
        developing this from scratch does not make an awful lot
        of sense (this is the situaution in Europe, I don't know
        about the US, but I'd be surprised if the situation was very
        much different - apart from the multinational bit, perhaps :-)

        While the algorithmical side of the thing is far from trivial,
        the main problem is a current database. This is where the big
        money comes in. There have been a couple of articles on this
        topic in GIS Europe over the last two or three years.

        Good luck,

        Martin
--
Martin Ameskamp, Inst. f. Informatik I (Computing Dept.)
Kiel University, Olshausenstr. 40, 24118 Kiel, Germany
Fax: ++49 431 8804054, Voice: ++49 431 8804474, 
ma at informatik.uni-kiel.de, URL http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~ma/