In the early days of navigation, humans relied on visual landmarks such as mountains, coastlines, and structures to determine their location and direction. With the arrival of tools like compasses and sextants, navigation became more precise, enhancing navigation and positioning. In the modern era, outdoor navigation relies heavily on global satellite-based positioning systems such as GPS, allowing individuals to navigate around the globe, locate points of interest, and assist robots in positioning themselves in both known and unknown environments.

While indoor positioning systems have been in development for decades, their adoption has accelerated in recent years in complex environments like airports, supermarkets, and warehouses. These systems are employed for tasks such as
resource tracking, automated order picking, and guiding users through complex building layouts. Unlike traditional positioning systems, which rely on a fixed set of techniques, indoor positioning or navigation systems often use diverse technologies and hardware, usually requiring proprietary software or intricate calibration to function. This reliance on proprietary solutions creates several challenges. Users are often required to install software for each specific location or building, fragmenting the user experience and raising concerns about privacy and data ownership. For building owners, the high costs and complexity of developing and deploying these systems limit broader adoption. Moreover, closed systems hinder interoperability, making it difficult to integrate or share data across different platforms.

These challenges extend beyond positioning systems and reflect general issues with user data, where closed applications restrict seamless data exchange from one platform to another. One promising solution involves creating open frameworks that enable seamless data interoperability, giving users greater control over their information while reducing dependence on systems owned and managed by a single organisation. Although regulatory initiatives within the European Union are gradually enabling data interoperability, significant obstacles remain, particularly in domains where data does not rely on existing standardisations, such as is the case with indoor positioning systems.

This research focuses on enabling seamless data and knowledge exchange between positioning systems, both indoor and outdoor. It addresses the limitations of current approaches by proposing a framework that facilitates the integration, discovery, and management of location data in a way that prioritises user control and interoperability. Central to this research is the development of improved vocabularies that enhance machine understanding of location data, providing a foundation for seamless communication between systems. Additionally, it explores techniques for
enabling positioning systems to discover one another without prior coordination, thereby reducing the dependency on pre-established connections and broadening their use and reuse in other use cases. The research also introduces strategies for managing user data effectively, ensuring privacy and flexibility while supporting seamless exchange across systems. These contributions collectively advance the development of an open, interoperable ecosystem for both indoor and outdoor positioning systems, addressing key limitations of current approaches and paving the way for a future where location data can be stored, shared, and accessed effortlessly across a wide range of use cases and technologies.