Find the route to your nearest Covid-19 vaccination center in Germany — new App by HeiGIT based on OpenStreetMap and openrouteservice
Jan 19th, 2021 by GIScienceHD
Where is is the closed Covid-19 vaccination center and what is the best way to get there? A new route planning app helps you answer this questions by suggesting ways to the nearest vaccination center.
You can use this route planner now at https://impfzentrum.openrouteservice.org
You only have to enter a starting location or allow the automatic use of the position information on your smartphone and the route to the vaccination center can be displayed. The app also offers written navigation instructions and further information about the vaccination center. By default, a route is calculated by car, but you can also switch to pedestrian routing, different bike profiles or even wheelchair routing. If necessary, various other options are available for adapting the route planning.
The app works online and can be used in modern web browsers on a PC, newer smartphones or tablets. The data from OpenStreetMap (OSM) is used as the data basis for both route planning and also for the vaccination centers. You can report or add missing data directly to OpenStreetMap by yourself.
Please note that you need a personal vaccination appointment to be admitted. The appointments are made differently in the individual federal states. Also the closest vaccination center within your state may not the one you are formally assigned to. You can also select the correct vaccination center yourself in the App. The app is currently focusing on Germany, but could be extended to other regions as well if the vaccination centers of that region have been added to OpenStreetMap or are available in a structured way.
The application is based on the powerful route planner openrouteservice.org (ORS) and is developed by the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT gGmbH) together with the GIScience Research Group at Heidelberg University and made available as open source and with a free Web-API. Help pages for using the app are available for desktop web browsers, iOS or Android smartphones. The vaccination center app is an adapted version of the new ORS web client (beta).
This first prototype version of the app is still under development and will be further improved. We appreciate your suggestions for improvements.
All the best for the vaccination, follow the hygiene rules and stay healthy!
In addition, the general availability and supply of the population with vaccination centers was previously calculated by HeiGIT in this study. Openrouteservice supports accessibility analyzes by calculating so-called isochrones. Another analysis examines the accessibility of pharmacies taking into account the 15 km rule.
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also of interest: openrouteservice multi vehicle optimization quota increased to support logistics during corona crisis