Jonathan Raper

A critical evaluation of location based services and their potential

This Editorial lead article for the Journal of Location Based Services surveys this complex and multi-disciplinary field and identifies the key research issues. Although this field has produced early commercial disappointments, the inevitability that pervasive location-aware services on mobile devices will emerge means that much research is needed to inform these developments. The article reviews firstly: the science and technology of positioning, geographic information science, mobile cartography, spatial cognition and interfaces, information science, ubiquitous computing; and secondly the business, content and legal, social and ethics aspects, before synthesising the key issues for this new field.

Applications of location-based services: a selected review

This article reviews a selected set of location–based services (LBS) that have been published in the research literature, focussing on mobile guides, transport support, gaming, assistive technology and health. The research needs and opportunities in each area are evaluated and the connections between each category of LBS are discussed. The review illustrates the enormous diversity of forms in which LBS are appearing and the wide range of application sectors that are represented. However, very few of these applications are implemented pervasively on a commercial basis as this is still challenging technically and economically.

Mobile augmented reality techniques for GeoVisualisation

This paper presents the first prototype of an interactive visualisation framework specifically designed for presenting geographical information in both indoor and outdoor environments. The input of our system is ESRI Shapefiles which represent 3D building geometry and landuse attributes. Participants can visualise 3D reconstructions of geographical information in real-time based on two visualisation clients: a mobile VR interface and a tangible AR interface. To prove the functionality of our system an educational application specifically designed for university students is illustrated with some initial results. Finally, our conclusions as well as future work are presented.

A framework for evaluating geographical information

This paper introduces a framework for the evaluation of geographic information (GI), divided into representational and communicative aspects. The representational component is concerned with how ‘real-world’ phenomena situated in space and time come to be represented or modelled in GI, considered at ontological, modelling and system levels. The communicative component of GI is concerned with how representations of GI are understood by the users of the information, considered at relevance, commodification, exploration and management levels. This paper attempts to bring together the previous work in all these areas into an evaluative framework so that creators and users can assess the validity and success of the representational and communicative process overall. This paper also outlines the architecture of a client-server geolibrary designed for information sharing. This kind of architecture provides a distributed and open platform for the development of GI networks, upon which more productive use of GI can be built in future.

Persuasive technology for leisure and health: development of a personal navigation tool

As the number and proportions of older people grow, those living in developed economies are increasingly likely to enjoy an active and healthy period of their life. During this time they are free to pursue old, and new, leisure interests and to travel around, both locally (often in towns, with the aid of concessionary, or free, travel passes) and to more distant places. Younger older people (up to age 75), people on higher incomes and people in better health are all more likely to move around more [1]. These trends are likely to increase in the future [2]. Meanwhile, technology developments in mobile telephony and geographic information systems are making it possible to locate the geographic position not only of vehicles and boats but also of people on foot [3]. These technical developments inspired the team working on this project to apply the sophisticated technology associated with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) , Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Location Based Services (LBS) to address the pedestrian navigational needs of two groups of people who are frequently excluded from commercial design concerns. As well as older people, the research is addressing the needs of people with severe visual impairments. However, to date, the major thrust of fieldwork has focused on older people.