A Light-Weight Framework for Location-Based Services

• Published in: Lecture notes in computer science pp. 206 - 210
• Main Authors: Schwinger, W., Grün, Ch, Pröll, B., Retschitzegger, W.
• Format: Book Chapter Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2005; Springer
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Exact sciences and technology; Major Application Area; Mobile Tourist Guide; Software; Thematic Layer; Thick Client; Tourism Domain; Internet; Context aware; Distributed system; Mobile computing
• ISBN: 9783540297390; 3540297391
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/11575863_37

Context-aware mobile systems aim at delivering information and services tailored to the current user’s situation [1], [10]. One major application area of these systems is the tourism domain, assisting tourists especially during their vacation through location-based services (LBS) [4], [7]. Consequently a proliferation of approaches [2], [5], [8], [9], [12], [15], [17], [18] can be observed, whereby an in-depth study of related work has shown that some of these existing mobile tourism information systems exhibit few limitations [3], [19]: First, existing approaches often use proprietary interfaces to other systems (e.g. a Geographic Information System – GIS), and employ their own data repositories, thus falling short in portability and having to deal with time consuming content maintenance. Second, often thick clients are used that may lack out-of-the-box-usage. Third, existing solutions are sometimes inflexible concerning configuration capabilities of the system. To deal with those deficiencies, we present a lightweight framework for LBS that can be used for various application domains. This framework builds on existing GIS standards, incorporates already available Web content, can be employed out-of-the-box, and is configurable by using a Web-based interface. The applicability of the framework is demonstrated by means of a prototype of a mobile tourist guide.