Smart Maps through Semantic Web, Social Media, and Sentiment Analysis

In this paper we describe a new approach to creating rich, dynamic and customized maps for business or leisure activities, and demonstrate how the approach can be implemented through a prototype system. The approach is aimed at changing the way we map the world by providing a meaningful and personalized context that is augmented with the semantic web, social media integration and sentiment analysis. In our approach, smart search for an entity on a map is assisted through the semantic web. Once a map entity is identified, real-time and dynamic information about properties of the entity is gathered from social media and is integrated into the map. Sentiment analysis with regard to the map entity can be conducted and its results displayed or used as filters. The main benefit of the proposed approach is two-fold: it allows users to define their own user experience or context by selecting specific properties they want to display on their maps (ratings, comments, pictures and other specific business information), and it organizes interactive maps through the hierarchy of entities/markers/layers/timeframes. We also compare our approach with related work.