Route Instructions Based on Topological Stages of Closeness 

Wuersch, M. (1), Caduff, D. (2),

September 23, 2006

1 Intelligent Spatial Technologies
PO Box 3857
Portland, ME 04104, USA
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2 Department of Geography, University of Zurich - Irchel
Winterthurerstr. 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
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Abstract. Pedestrian Navigation Systems (PNSs) differ from guidance systems for car navigation in many ways (Krüger et al., 2004) and, therefore, demand different requirements (May et al., 2003, Corona and Winter, 2002). The most important difference is that pedestri-ans are not tied to a road network. For instance, pedestrians are free to use network-like systems, such as walkways or streets, but may also switch at will to region-based sys-tems that have no obvious network structure, such as parks, train stations, etc. PNSs that provide route instructions, therefore, need to go beyond network-dependent instructions and adapt to the variability of environments that wayfinders pass through.

An application of Location Based Services and GIS in Tourism Management and Promotion 

MAURIZIO GIBIN, Post PhD Scholar, University of Eastern Piedmont

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Working paper n. 11 , February 2006

The paper presents a case study developed during the Vespucci Summer School for Geographic Information Science in 2003. The author’s team proposed an innovative solution for guided tours in the city of Florence solving the problem of cutting the costs of travel guides and providing high added value services cheap and flexible. CICER1 applies all the research topics covered during the Location Based Services module of the Vespucci Summer School, involving mobile technologies and positioning systems. The approach used is practical and lead by the technical feasibility of CICER1. The author introduces the concepts of Location Based Services, Point of Interest and Portable Digital Assistants with a focus on their combined use to create a mobile localisation system that provides targeted real time geographic information to pedestrian tourists in a urban environment.

A Family of Portable Spatial Information Technologies 

Max J. EGENHOFER and Werner KUHN

Emerging technologies will change the future use of geographic information systems (GISs), moving GISs from the office desktops into the users’ hands. Current GIS architectures focus on a static environment in which a user sits at a workstation to perform spatial analysis. With the advent of ubiquitous computing, this setting will change dramatically. Devices that combine a hand-held computer with a GPS receiver, a cellular phone, and a digital camera will enable users to integrate spatial analysis into their daily lives, opening GIS to the mass markets of day-to-day use. Mobile GISs will differ significantly from today’s multi-purpose GISs and we envision a whole family of portable spatial information technologies that will be tailored to specific needs. Smart glasses, for instance, will allow people to augment reality by seeing additional thematic information or seeing through obstacles. Smart Compasses will be based on entry-level Personal Digital Assistants, giving directions in the field on such phenomena as weather-fronts, congestions, or geographic areas. Mobile GISs pose challenging new research questions about the spatial concepts people employ when they move through space, the interaction styles and modalities people use in the field, the particularities about processing spatial queries posed in the field, the efficient handling of massive amounts of spatio-temporal data, and the on-the-fly integration of new field observations with data warehouses across a distributed information network.

Using Topological Stages of Closeness 

Wuersch, M. (1), Caduff, D. (2)

1 Intelligent Spatial Technologies
PO Box 3857
Portland, ME 04104, USA
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2 Department of Geography, University of Zurich - Irchel
Winterthurerstr. 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
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5th International Workshop on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems 2005, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. LNCS 3633, Springer, pp. 31-41, Lausanne, Switzerland 

ABSTRACT. In pedestrian navigation, navigators are free to choose any passable way. Because of this characteristic, accurate route instructions are important when navigating from waypoint to waypoint. In this paper, a theoretical framework is described for dealing with position uncertainty in pedestrian guiding systems. Stages of closeness are defined based on the topological relation between the navigator and a waypoint. These stages of closeness allow for refining route instructions and, therefore, leading to more accurate navigation and increased efficiency of the system.

Christopher E. Frank

A THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science (in Spatial Information Science and Engineering)

The Graduate School
The University of Maine
December, 2003 

People navigate for very different reasons, whether they are utility workers, soldiers, or tourists. Many of the basic problems they encounter are similar, because much of the information people want or need cannot be directly interpreted from their surroundings. It is this problem of not being able to gather the right information from their surroundings that can lead people to getting lost. At any given intersection turning right might look just as adequate as turning left (Raubal and Worboys 1999); therefore, people who have never been to a place before and do not have a mental model of the environment use maps, which give them a panoptic view of the area. Maps are also useful as they provide information about a place that is not apparent to a person’s senses. For example, looking at a building one might be able to tell that it is a church but not when it was built, or what the overall shape of the church is (Stea et al. 1996). It is these problems people have interacting with foreign environments that has led to this research of egocentric mobile geographic information systems (GIS's).

An Intelligent Mobile GIS 

Frank, C. , Caduff, D., and Wuersch, M.

GIS Days 2004, Muenster, Muenster, Germany, IfGI Prints, pp. 277-287

Location-based Services (LBS) is a relatively new, growing technology field that focuses on providing information via mobile and field units based on individual spatial positions. In contrast, Geographic Information Systems (GISs) is a well-established field of technology, which incorporates decades of academic and industrial research and development. GISs contain many of the components necessary for LBS as they provide the basic tools and, hence, make LBS functionally possible. Three additional fundamen-tal aspects, however, are required for GISs to provide added value services: mobility, distributiveness, and egocentric awareness. In this paper we investigate these three as-pects, illustrate how they close the gap between a GIS and a LBS, and finally propose an intelligent mobile GIS that conforms to the definition of LBS.

A Next Generation of Geographic Information Systems 

Max J. Egenhofer
National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis
Department of Spatial Information Science and Engineering
Department of Computer Science
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469-5711, USA
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http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~max

Abstract. Over the next decade many developments in existing and new information technologies are likely to affect the ways in which science is done, decisions are made, and society operates. Early evidence of these trends is already available in the form of new satellite sensors, the diffusion and miniaturization of GPS receivers, greater Internet bandwidth, cheaper and larger storage, digital libraries, the growth of the WWW, palm-top and pen-based computers, and wireless communication. These technologies will provide exciting new opportunities to improve dramatically decision making and problem solving in the geo-spatial domain. They will also accelerate the trend of moving information technology off the desktop and into the field and into the hands of scientists, professionals, and citizens who discover, work, or perform leisure activities. Devices that combine a hand-held computer with a GPS receiver, a cellular phone, and a digital camera will enable users to integrate spatial analysis into their daily lives, opening geographic information systems (GISs) to the mass markets of day-to-day use. Such Spatial Information Appliances (SIAs) will differ significantly from today’s multi-purpose GISs, because we envision a whole family of portable SIAs that will be tailored to specific needs. Smart glasses, for instance, will allow people to augment reality by seeing additional thematic information or seeing through obstacles. Smart Compasses will be based on entry-level Personal Digital Assistants, giving directions in the field on such dynamic phenomena as weather-fronts or congestions. The Geo-Wand will allow users to query geographic space by pointing to features in the real world.  This talk will sketch this vision of ubiquitous geospatial computing and will discuss challenging new research questions about the spatial concepts people employ when they move through space, the interaction styles and modalities people use in the field, the particularities about processing spatial queries posed in the field, the efficient handling of massive amounts of spatio-temporal data, and the on-the-fly integration of new field observations with data warehouses across a distributed information network.