The Value of Detours

The estimation of the value of georeferenced spaces is challenging because the value of a space depends on many factors such as recreation potential, sociability, cultural points of interest, etc. To account for these personal values, interviews and surveys can be conducted but this is costly and elaborate, and this requires a user action. Recent approaches use social media to attribute positive or negative associations of users to a georeferenced space by analysing the semantic linkages. This approach is promising but at the same time prone to biases due to a user selection bias and the interpretation of the semantics. In this paper, an alternative method based on the systematic analysis of georeferenced paths of people is proposed, which does not require direct user interaction. Underlying the assumption that people are willing to take a longer and more time-consuming path if the detour has a personal value for them, this work proposes to estimate these personal values systematically and partly automated by analysing the pathways taken. The authors suggest to conduct a first feasibility study analysing the GPS positions of people to obtain information and find patterns of the personal preferences of places, and matching them to interview or social media derived information on platial preferences.