Free and Open Source Software for Geomatics Conference FOSS4G 2010 Barcelona

Selected Presentations

Home > Presentations > Abstract details

Title

AN EXAMPLE OF A TOURISTIC LOCATION BASED SERVICE (LBS) WITH OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

Abstract

 The paper concerns the Location Based Services (LBS), in particular regarding the components establishment them and their standardization and interoperability issues. These are value-added services that use the information about a mobile user’s geographic location to provide him dynamically appropriate data such as information, maps etc. At an international level, both the ISO/TC 211 and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) have issued directives and standards for LBS services. Many  application of LBS has been developed in software systems by both commercial and free/open source companies. Yet, commercial software implementations don’t advertise any compliance with the OpenLS standard. For these reasons, our research team decided to develop a client-server platform compliant with the OpenLS standard. The application on which the research was based is a touristic information system, where the user can request information about the location he’s in. According to OpenLS terminology, this application falls within a particular case of the Reverse Geocoding service. Thus, we developed a server in the Python programming language, implementing the part of the OpenLS Location Utility Service specification concerning the Reverse Geocoding operation. On the client side, we developed an application based on the free gvSIG Mini map visualization software, allowing the user to interrogate the Reverse Geocoding service.

Authors

Giuseppina Vacca - University of Cagliari