Dear Colleagues,

Indoor environments and enclosed spaces have, in recent times, emerged as the next great frontier of mapping. These spaces present challenges that strain mapping technologies that, up until now, have been developed for mapping outdoor spaces. The challenges of mapping enclosed spaces arise from the fact that these spaces are confined, cluttered with people and furniture, and shielded from commonly used positioning systems like GPS, etc.

Today’s maps are commonly used in navigational aids, and the ubiquity of smart mobile devices and more pin-point commercial activity will in future drive a greater demand for indoor navigational aids. As with mapping technologies, indoor navigation is more demanding than its outdoor counterpart. For example, one reason for this is that visibility within indoor environments is limited and additional tools have to be offered to users to overcome this. Solving the challenges has meant that concepts, data models, and standards have had to be redefined to meet the requirements of 3D indoor spatial applications.

The aim of this Special Issue is to present current and state of the art research in the development of acquisition systems, mobile mapping systems, indoor data modelling and analysis, navigation and visualisation of indoor environments. Because of the multidisciplinary nature of the problem of 3D indoor mapping, contributions are expected from various fields including photogrammetry, computer vision and image analysis, laser scanning, data and information management, computer graphics, human–machine interaction and many others.

Topics that will be considered for this issue include (but are not limited to):

• Indoor acquisition systems
  
• Simultaneous localisation and mapping
  
• Indoor data structures and models
  
• Indoor positioning and localisation
  
• Indoor navigation and guidance
  
• Navigating between outdoor and indoor models
  
• Visualisation and simulation
  
• Evacuation and human activity monitoring
  
• User requirements and best practices
  
• Resolving privacy and legal concerns
  

Dr. Sisi Zlatanova
Dr. Kourosh Khoshelham
Dr. George Sithole
Guest Editors

Submission