cuTunnel

Carleton's buildings connect through a tunnel system that first-years find hard to navigate, and in an Ottawa winter it is the way to get to class on time. cuTunnel lets students and faculty tap a start and a destination and see the shortest route underground, with an estimated walking time.

• The tunnel network is a hand-built weighted graph: 37 building and landmark nodes placed at fixed coordinates so the layout matches the campus map, and 46 edges whose weights are walking times gathered by pacing the tunnels.
• Cytoscape.js draws the graph in a single-page app and its built-in Dijkstra implementation computes the route. The path is highlighted and the summed weight shown as minutes and seconds.
• Buildings with several entrances or levels are modelled as more than one node, such as the two University Centre levels joined by their own edge, so routes reflect the stairs people actually take.
• Tap the first building to set the start and the second to route; a third tap, or the empty canvas, clears it. Most tunnel segments are colour-coded by section so the map stays readable.

The hardest part was the data, not the algorithm: measuring believable travel times for 46 segments and turning them into weights. cuTunnel won the Wolfram Award (top five) and People's Choice at cuHacking 6.