3. The starting scenario

The starting scenario for CICER1 is an hypothetic big tour operator, TO, offering several guided city tours to its customers in Florence. Tourists can choose between different kinds of cultural programs with a different focus, for example art & history,
architecture, gastronomy or entertainment and nightlife. The TO used to work with local guides but as the number of customers for this targeted and expensive tours has dropped dramatically during the last few years, it decides to offer a new, attractive type of cultural tour for a lower price. The TO obviously does not want to lower his rates, so he has to cut off the costs for the local guides. The tour operator investigates the idea of ‘automating’ its guided tours, offering personalized tours for the individual tourist on a flexible and interactive basis.

4. Methodological and technical approach in creating CICER1

The development team approach rely on few concepts: usability in real time that in technical terms are translated in simple interfaces with few “clicks”, service customisation and use of new positioning systems. Massive use of technology is intended to simplify tourist experience, by providing target services. The tourist creates himself his vacation: before the departure he can fills in an online form concerning personal interests on TO’s website. The information contained in the form generate a tour with personalized data further implemented on a PDA. When the tourist arrives in Florence, he will collects at the TO local office the service with the application. After a short explanation the tourist can start the tour being totally free to choose the start and end time of the tour. While walking by the streets, the user may follow a suggested itinerary and get certain alerts via the PDA when a POI is approached.

4.1. Client/server architecture

The technical choice of distributed architecture allows tourists to access information at any time even if no connection is available. A client/server architecture involves a client side: the tourist and the device and a server side: a computer connected to the web containing the information useful for tourists. The service can be used: • before the travel, compiling the form mentioned above, indicating tourist’s ideal travel: which monument he wants to visit, which restaurants he wants to and go and where he wants to sleep. • During the tour: through an Internet connection, the tourist can choose to visualize or download information to the PDA. This avoids connection loss and diminishes downloading times. The device might not be connected to the server during the tour because data has just been downloaded. The task of tourist offices is to collect database elements and load them on the PDA that will be given to the tourist upon arrival (the operation of compiling the form can be carried out before the departure or at the arrival in the office).

FIG. 1 – CLIENT/SERVER ARCHITECTURE (Team “CICER1” elaboration, 2003)

On the left in fig. 1 there is the client side: the tourist has a PDA with GPS device that gives real time localization. Location is implemented in a GIS platform and the tourist is shown as a moving point on a reference map. This is enough to complete a guided tour of the city; even with no internet connection available. If the tourist needs further information, more multimedia data or more push services, a network connection is needed. GPRS connection allows data exchange between the PDA and server (fig. 2). GPRS has been preferred as Wireless because telecom operators are investing a lot in this communication protocol.

FIG. 2 – CLIENT SIDE HARDWARE (Team “CICER1” elaboration, 2003)

The software from the client side is ArcPad 6.0, the ESRI GIS platform for palm pc. CICER1 does not need advanced GIS capabilities except creating thematic maps, and performing simple network analysis. It relies mainly on visualization of different data. Development team designed some ad hoc scripts for real time recording of new points of interest (fig. 3) that have been tested in Florence by creating a personalized database containing information and multimedia links.

FIG. 3 – CLIENT SIDE SOFTWARE AND SCRIPT (Team “CICER1” elaboration, 2003)

Fig. 3 shows one of the different visualization available to tourists: it is also possible to visualize a full screen map. The map shows: scale, road network, an aerial photograph and the points of interest, thematized with different symbols according to the category they belong to. The red circle shows the software customisation described above: a “record” button to store a POI and a walking man button used to insert a path. On the server side the web server (fig. 4) contains a simple geodatabase, a “common data access and management framework for ArcGIS that enables you to deploy GIS functionality and business logic wherever it is needed—in desktops, servers (including the Web), or mobile devices. With this architecture you have the tools to assemble intelligent geographic information systems." (ESRI, 2003). The geodatabase used on the server side is in a simple form and contains data in vector and raster formats combined with attribute data. The database containing tourist preferences acts like a filter on the geodatabase and select the features to be downloaded to the PDA. This is an added value of the service: the tourist creating his own tour, contributes to the creation of a big segmentation database similar to Experian’s MOSAIC (Experian, 2003) containing elementary information and advanced profiles of tourist behaviours useful for tour operators. Fig. 5 shows the structure of the database schematically indicated with two various colours the data relative to tourist and chosen feature of interest.

FIG. 4 – CICER1 SERVER (Team “CICER1” elaboration, 2003)

FIG. 5 – CICER1 DATABASE (Team “CICER1” elaboration, 2003)

Server side has only one front end interface: the web site (fig. 6) used to collect tourist information3.

 

FIG. 6 – CICER1 WEB SITE (Team “CICER1” elaboration, 2003)

4.2. Data layers

CICER1 needs high resolution and accurate maps because its users are mostly pedestrians. This represents an improvement despite traditional cartography, allowing the overlaying of different layers. A great amount of data at a high resolution is involved causing high expenses and difficulties in find them free for the pilot project. The historical centre of Florence was CICER1 test area. Data were downloaded from the Tuscany region website the “carta tecnica regionale”4, a vector map of Florence historical center in 1:2000 scale. After an elaboration phase, the dataset5 was used to georeference the Florence orthophoto (fig. 7) downloaded from the SIT6 (fig. 8). During the georeferencing process the aerial photograph has been projected with the same coordinate system of the vector map.

 

FIG. 7 – FLORENCE ORTHOPHOTO (Team “CICER1” elaboration, 2003)

 

FIG. 8 – GEOREFERENCING PROCESS (Team “CICER1” elaboration, 2003)

4.3. Point of interest database creation

The creation of the POI database was tested on the field by the team. This practical phase helps to see how CICER1 really works avoiding the purchase of expensive data. POI depend on tourist experience: from what he is seeing during his tour and what he is interested in. Each point of interest is recorded on the PDA by pointing the pen on the screen: ArcPad automatically stores the GPS coordinates of the point (fig. 9). It then becomes a record on the database, whose fields filled by the user are the category, the impressions of the tourist about it, the description, multimedia elements and a subjective ranking.