Point-of-Interests: Features, Applications and Challenges

Point-of-interest is a feature in a specific location which is somehow important for user. For clear reasons, these features are kinds of point feature in a spatial database. Similarly, line-of-interest is a linear feature that is attractive to the users. The surface feature such as an entertainment area or a specific land use, can be defined as an area-of-interest. The user's requirement and context define point-of-interest in a specific position. Therefore, a point-of-interest of a user could not be considered as a point-of-interest from other users view. Today, the growth of the positioning technologies, communicating networks and mobile devices, led to a great development in the field of geographic information technology. Besides, it offered a variety of location-based services through the mobile devices. One of the important and useful location-based services is finding the point-of-interests and offering them to the users. It is very important so that the users' trip planning is also carried out based on their favorite points. Offering the point-of-interests helps users discover new places, and makes it possible to discover the places without user's request or spending more time. This service can be more useful in areas where are unfamiliar for users. In this study, the concept of interesting features, the points-of-interest applications in the different geographical issues, and extraction methods of interesting feature in the published articles, to introduce research areas and to create more fluid situation for future studies in this field.