Spatial data infrastructure requirements for mobile location based journey planning

A growing number of services are now being offered over mobile devices. They typically combine positioning technology, wireless technology and spatial analysis methods applied to detailed geographical, time based data to offer services in support of time critical, spatial, mobile decision making. A collection of research issues need to be addressed in the successful delivery of such services that extend beyond issues of sophisticated network algorithms. Specifically, careful attention needs to be given to: (1) people and user environments; (2) access to networks; (3) policy, privacy and liability; (4) standards and interoperability; and (5) data quality. Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is the collective term for these interconnected issues and has been a traditional area of research associated with geographic information science. In this paper the particular SDI requirements for the successful delivery of Location Based Services (LBS) are explored through the development of a prototype LBS for journey planning. The initial implementation and testing of this prototype has revealed that the SDI context is well suited as a framework within which to examine the related LBS issues. From a more technical perspective, the testing has revealed that data structure and the means by which large data sets are mined (in order to gather information to present to users) is critical to the success of timely information delivery over limited bandwidth media.