pointofinterest

A point of interest (POI) is a named location that someone might want to find or visit, such as a shop, restaurant, park, landmark, or facility. In geographic information systems and digital maps, a POI is modeled as a point geometry with a fixed geographic coordinate and a set of attributes.

Typical attributes include name, latitude and longitude, category or type, address, phone number, hours of operation, website, and sometimes user rating or popularity data. POIs may stand alone or be located inside larger places, such as a mall or transit hub. The category helps organize and filter POIs for search and navigation.

Taxonomies and standards: many datasets use OpenStreetMap's tagging scheme (amenity, tourism, historic, shop) or schema.org types such as Place or LocalBusiness. POI data can be encoded in formats such as GeoJSON, KML, CSV, or in relational databases, and accessed through mapping APIs and geoprocessing tools.

Sources and applications: POI information is obtained from crowdsourcing, official government data, commercial providers, or app user input. It supports navigation, local search, trip planning, tourism guides, market analysis, and accessibility studies. Licensing and attribution vary by source.

Limitations and quality: POI data can be incomplete, outdated, or duplicated; accuracy depends on maintenance and data governance; regional coverage and multilingual naming can be uneven, and privacy considerations may apply for certain categories.

See also: Place; Geocoding; OpenStreetMap; LocalBusiness; Tourism; Geographic Information System.