AIRCC's International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology

Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription Access

Web Scraper Utilizes Google Street View Images to Power a University Tour


Affiliations
1 Webb School of California, Claremont, CA 91711, United States
2 California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA, 91768, United States
 

Due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, college tours are no longer available, so many students have lost the opportunity to see their dream school’s campus. To solve this problem, we developed a product called “Virtourgo,” a university virtual tour website that uses Google Street View images gathered from a web scraper allowing students to see what college campuses are like even when tours are unavailable during the pandemic. The project consists of 3/4 parts: the web scraper script, the GitHub server, the Google Domains DNS Server, and the HTML files. Some challenges we met include scraping repeated pictures and letting the HTML dropdown menu jump to the correct location. We solved these by implementing Python and Javascript functions that specifically target such challenges. Finally, after experimenting with all the functions of the web scraper and website, we confirmed that it works as expected and can scrape and deliver tours of any university campus or public buildings we want.

Keywords

Web Scraping, Virtual Tour, Cloud Computing.
User
Notifications
Font Size

  • Anguelov, Dragomir, et al. "Google street view: Capturing the world at street level." Computer 43.6 (2010): 32-38.

  • Rundle, Andrew G., et al. "Using Google Street View to audit neighborhood environments." American journal of preventive medicine 40.1 (2011): 94-100.

  • Gorelick, Noel, et al. "Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone." Remote sensing of Environment 202 (2017): 18-27.

  • Patterson, Todd C. "Google Earth as a (not just) geography education tool." Journal of Geography 106.4 (2007): 145-152.

  • Mitchell, Ryan. Web scraping with Python: Collecting more data from the modern web. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.", 2018.

  • Lawson, Richard. Web scraping with Python. Packt Publishing Ltd, 2015.

  • Marrs, Tom. JSON at work: practical data integration for the web. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.", 2017.

  • Dabbish, Laura, et al. "Social coding in GitHub: transparency and collaboration in an open software repository." Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on computer supported cooperative work. 2012.

  • Aghayari, S., et al. "Geometric calibration of full spherical panoramic Ricoh-Theta camera." ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences IV-1/W1 (2017) 4 (2017): 237-245.

  • Kavanagh, Sam, et al. "Creating 360 educational video: A case study." Proceedings of the 28th Australian conference on computer-human interaction. 2016.

  • Napolitano, Rebecca K., George Scherer, and Branko Glisic. "Virtual tours and informational modeling for conservation of cultural heritage sites." Journal of Cultural Heritage 29 (2018): 123-129.

  • Ashmore, Beth, and Jill E. Grogg. "Library virtual tours: A case study." Research Strategies 20.1-2 (2004): 77-88.

  • Kabassi, Katerina, et al. "Evaluating museum virtual tours: the case study of Italy." Information 10.11 (2019): 351.

  • Parsons, Thomas D., and Albert A. Rizzo. "Initial validation of a virtual environment for assessment of memory functioning: virtual reality cognitive performance assessment test." CyberPsychology & Behavior 11.1 (2008): 17-25.

  • Burdea, Grigore, and Philippe Coiffet. "Virtual reality technology." (2003): 663-664.

  • Andri, Chairil, Mohammed Hazim Alkawaz, and A. Bibo Sallow. "Adoption of mobile augmented reality as a campus tour application." Int. J. Eng. Technol. 7 (2018): 64-69.

  • Perdana, Doan, Arif Indra Irawan, and Rendy Munadi. "Implementation of a web based campus virtual tour for introducing Telkom university building." International Journal if Simulation—Systems, Science & Technology 20.1 (2019): 1-6.

  • Eiris, Ricardo, Masoud Gheisari, and Behzad Esmaeili. "PARS: Using augmented 360-degree panoramas of reality for construction safety training." International journal of environmental research and public health 15.11 (2018): 2452.

  • Li, Xiaojiang, Carlo Ratti, and Ian Seiferling. "Mapping urban landscapes along streets using google street view." International cartographic conference. Springer, Cham, 2017.

  • Thennakoon, M. S. B. W. T. M. P. S. B., et al. "TOURGURU: tour guide mobile application for tourists." 2019 International Conference on Advancements in Computing (ICAC). IEEE, 2019.

  • T. Widiyaningtyas, D. D. Prasetya and A. P. Wibawa, "Web-based Campus Virtual Tour Application using ORB Image Stitching," 2018 5th International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics (EECSI), 2018, pp. 46-49, doi: 10.1109/EECSI.2018.8752709.

  • Fry, D., Mooney, S.J., Rodríguez, D.A. et al. Assessing Google Street View Image Availability in Latin American Cities. J Urban Health 97, 552–560 (2020).

  • Keralis, J.M., Javanmardi, M., Khanna, S. et al. Health and the built environment in United States cities: measuring associations using Google Street View-derived indicators of the built environment. BMC Public Health 20, 215 (2020).

  • Li X. Examining the spatial distribution and temporal change of the green view index in New York City using Google Street View images and deep learning. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. October 2020. doi:10.1177/2399808320962511


Abstract Views: 323

PDF Views: 140




  • Web Scraper Utilizes Google Street View Images to Power a University Tour

Abstract Views: 323  |  PDF Views: 140

Authors

Peiyuan Sun
Webb School of California, Claremont, CA 91711, United States
Yu Sun
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA, 91768, United States

Abstract


Due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, college tours are no longer available, so many students have lost the opportunity to see their dream school’s campus. To solve this problem, we developed a product called “Virtourgo,” a university virtual tour website that uses Google Street View images gathered from a web scraper allowing students to see what college campuses are like even when tours are unavailable during the pandemic. The project consists of 3/4 parts: the web scraper script, the GitHub server, the Google Domains DNS Server, and the HTML files. Some challenges we met include scraping repeated pictures and letting the HTML dropdown menu jump to the correct location. We solved these by implementing Python and Javascript functions that specifically target such challenges. Finally, after experimenting with all the functions of the web scraper and website, we confirmed that it works as expected and can scrape and deliver tours of any university campus or public buildings we want.

Keywords


Web Scraping, Virtual Tour, Cloud Computing.

References