WEBPARK LOCATION BASED SERVICES FOR SPECIES SEARCH IN RECRATION AREA

The paper describes research work in the area of mobile cartography as part of IST-project WebPark. It presents the concept and development of a location based service for searching for species information in a recration area. With help of this concrete use case, questions about dynamic cartographic symbolisation of point objects can be investigated, which will be hopefully prove generic enough to draw conclusions for all types of thematic information and points of interest. After a short introduction to the WebPark project, the conclusions of a user questionnaire and results of first trial with ArcPad software are presented. The goal is that research work and software development regularly evaluated against the user requirements. For the species search application, a model of question types is created which considers three things; the spatial nature of the questions, how wildlife semantics are used and the intention of the questions. The answer model includes the manifold research projects, which were done in Swiss national park. Adopting this project view ensures that visitors are provided with answers correct to the best of the park’s knowledge. The suggested user-interface allows the question and answer control, based on the developed models. Finally, scale and generalisation issues in the portrayal of wildlife information are described. Based on the model-view-controller paradigm, three components will be used to generate adapted maps model generalisation, an organisation and interpretation component and view generalisation component. 1. INTRODUCTION AND WEBPARK PROJECT The WebPark project is a European research and development project (running between 10/2001-09/2004), which aims to create a platform to deliver Location Based Services in protected and recreation areas. Location Based Services denotes position dependent, personalised services, which are tailored for the individual requirements of tourists and visitors. As a result, the users are enabled to request information from several databases on the internet, whereby the data are filtered with reference to a personal user profile, time relevance and current position. In most cases the selected information has a spatial reference, therefore presentation with maps is emminently suitable, but also additional explanation in form of text, pictures and video are available. The WebPark consotium consists of partners from industry; European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, Geodan Mobile Solutions, sciences; City University London, University Zurich, Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil Lissabon, and national parks; the Swiss National Park. The industry partners are mainly responsible for developing architecture and webmapping technology. Swiss National Park provides content, such as animal and plant observations, route descriptions, POI etc. and enables the WebPark services to be tested. The research institutes investigate questions about knowledge discovery, the use of intelligent agents and dynamic visualisation on small displays with help of cartographic generalisation (1). Knowledge discovery in the context of the WebPark project is used to create spatio-temporal metadata for services and information [2]. Results could be visualized as several surfaces such as densitiy, visibility and accessibility. Density surfaces of user tracks indicate where time has been spent. Visibility surfaces give information on whether a user can see a location, or allow queries that include whether a user is within a POI’s viewshed. Surfaces storing mean velocity derived from all users’ mobile trajectories provide a measure of accessibility. Geographic knowledge could be extracted from databases of users’ spatio-temporal behaviour to generate summaries and patterns that agents can refer. The agents can then rank available information dependent on user profile, previous behaviour as well as spatio-temporal context. The geographic knowledge discovery component facilitates the creation of map layers which can classify characteristics of specific users and aggregate behaviour. The agent component can then convert this information into a measure of the accessibility of a specific location. This measure can be used to rank the accessibility of the user to different information sources in a more sophisticated form than simple distance functions. For development of WebPark services some assumption are made [3]: • Each visitor has a defined user profile. • The visitor does not want to perform exhaustive searches for information. • The visitor will not know the structure of information available. • The cartographic visualisation will be on a small screen. 2. USER REQUIREMENTS AND FIRST TRIAL WITH ARCPAD Consultations with users as well as the periodical tests are necessary to consider the end user requirements. The following points are a summary of WebPark questionnaires, which showed the preferences of the users referring to required information: ! Safety information has key importance during recreational activities, e.g. actual information on the state of the trials, weather changes, danger of falling rocks ! Visitors are generally interested in information for orientation. In the context of LBS, not only do digital maps have to be provided but also tools for the profile-visualisation of the planned trip, such as 3D-presentations of topography ! Wildlife information is highly demanded so thematic maps for vegetation and animal occurrences are necessary (this should be enhanced by a third information sources on these topics). ! The information provision has to be quick and to be provided on request. Audio mobile alerts and spoken content were not favoured. ! The general results showed that the user wishes to maintain control over information content, delivery (pull/push, text/picture/video) and personal privacy and security. Table 1. User requirements on possible WebPark services after questionnaires at Waddensee Region (left columns) and the Swiss National Park (right columns), [4] nWaddensee = 77 / nSNP = 1000 Important Nice to have Less important Not necessary i) Security information like weather warnings, shelters *62.5% 51.2% 26.4% 26.7% 2.8% 8.9% 8.3% 4.0% ii) Information on plants and animals 16.7% 28.1% 43.6% 41.3% 24.4% 10.2% 15.4% 8.6% iii) Maps and other information for orientation purposes 38.0% 20.5% 33.8% 37.4% 14.1% 12.8% 14.1% 17.2% iv) Information on local research activities 7.0% 8.7% 23.9% 40.0% 39.4% 26.5% 29.6% 11.9% v) Thematic maps, e.g. geology, tides 16.7% 15.4% 41.7% 45.4% 18.1% 16.3% 23.6% 10.4% * the most frequent answer per question and test area is coloured A first extensive test was carried out in the Swiss National Park in July 2002. The trial mainly aimed to test current technology capabilities (GPS positioning and network connection for data transfer) as well as get additional hints from the users. The preliminary prototype for the test was based on a PDA from Compaq (iPAQ+ Navman GPS) and a GPRS phone from Nokia with bluetooth. The ArcPad software from ESRI was used to show position and trial on a map. Further more the user could ask for habitats of different plants and animals, as well as for additional information of several species which were delivered as text, picture or video (see Figure 1). ArcPad-Software [5] was very helpful for a first realistic trial. Besides allowing the possibility of testing the general technical conditions, we obtained several beneficial hints from the users after demonstration of concrete LBS. Nevertheless ArcPad will be replaced during the project with our own platform for presentation of several WebPark services, in order to avoid several apparent weaknesses of ArcPad. These included slow loading of pictures, instability of application (e.g. when zooming) and use of too many menus and buttons, which are partly more disorienting the users then be helpful. Figure 1. Location Based Services with presentation of habitats of different plants and animals 3. SPECIES SEARCH APPLICATION The species application allows a user to access a variety of data sources related to the wildlife and ecology of a national park in a manner that is relevant to their questions. The application also provides a framework into which park administrators can embed their data holdings, so that these can be published and accessed in a comprehensive way. The following section discusses the requirements for a species application from the perspectives of the user and the national park. It then presents a framework for integrating data sources for the purpose of species identification. Finally it discusses issues concerning interfaces and user interaction with the application. 3.1 Model of question types The aim of this analysis is to try to identify a general model of the types of wildlife questions that national park visitors want to pose and the types of things that users want answers about. This model can then be used to design a webpark service against which users can pose such questions. The analysis involves the consideration of a list of visitor questions collected by staff at the Swiss National Park. These questions provide a basis for a general model for the species service, as well as provide real user input against which the service can later be evaluated. The aim of the analysis is to consider three things; the spatial nature of the questions, how wildlife semantics are used and the intention of the questions. 3.1.1 Spatial/Non Spatial Classification The point of classifying questions according to whether they are spatial or not is for three reasons. It helps to consider the best medium to allow users to pose questions and the service to answer questions e.g. with a map or with textual controls. Secondly, it allows a more thorough consideration of how space is used in questions and answers. Thirdly, it identifies the types of spatial features that will need to be represented in the data model to allow users to pose their question