Location Based Services (LBS)
Theme Overview:
Applications which take account of the facilities and services that are relevant to a user’s location and context (particularly those accessed by mobile devices such as smart phones) are called Location Based Services or LBS. So far, the LBS market has failed to develop fully for a number of reasons: For the first decade of the 21st century, GPS enabled mobiles could not be manufactured at a price acceptable to the mass consumer, positioning accuracy was not adequate for compelling services, user oriented data sets were not available, and sufficient critical mass could not be achieved. However, this is now changing, and CGS is at the fore of this research.
The data needed by LBS comes from many different sources and the suppliers have not traditionally collaborated to ensure that their data-sets are of a similar positional accuracy or interoperable. For a number of LBS propositions there are no current dependable commercial sources and ad-hoc consumer driven data capture approaches have evolved but again this leaves issues of compatibility, completeness and integrity.
CGS's LBS research has a particular focus on the challenges of generalisation/schematisation/visualisation, interoperability, middle-ware architectures for LBS, positioning and tracking, data and semantics. Researchers at the Centre working with IESSG scientists are working on ubiquitous positioning technologies, based on a combination of positioning inputs, improved and interoperable datasets, better usability for the small screen, semantic interoperability to allow for the best use of ‘crowd-source’ data, and other issues. CGS is developing new frameworks in which location based services can flourish.
CGS projects involving LBS include:
CGS staff focussing on this theme include:
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Jerry Swan
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Suchith Anand
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James Goulding
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Didier Leibovici
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Kristin Stock
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Mike Jackson