Apparatus and method for matching POI entities

An apparatus is provided for matching a first point of interest (POI) dataset including first POI entities with a second POI dataset including a plurality of second POI entities in a 2D region. Each of the first and second POI entities includes coordinate data and one or more label tokens. The apparatus includes processing circuitry configured to determine, for each first POI entity, a subset of the plurality of second POI entities. The processing circuitry is configured to determine, for each first POI entity, a composite matching score with one or more second POI entities. The composite matching score is based on a coordinate matching score and a label matching score, the coordinate matching score depending on a geographical distance and the label matching score depending on a local context relevance. The processing circuitry is configured to match each first POI entity with the second POI entities of the subset.