A Mobile Geographic Information System Managing Context-Aware Information Based On Ontologies
A Mobile Geographic Information System Managing Context-Aware Information Based On Ontologies
A Mobile Geographic Information System Managing Context-Aware Information Based On Ontologies
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the development of a Mobile Geographical Information System
(Mobile GIS) capable of managing context information. This system was established
from an architecture based on the specification of an ontology-based context model and a
set of Web Services to access information remotely stored in a geographic database. This
mechanism allows Mobile GIS users to receive personalized information in their mobile
devices, combining the information on their profiles with the display of geo-spatial data.
The Central Administration Councils are divided into implementation of features available in the context
Rector, Pro-Rectors, Centers of Education and management module.
Departments. The Rector governs the Pro-Rectors
and the Centers of Education. The Pro-Rectors 3.2 Building the geographic database
govern the Technical Administrative Bodies and the The geographic database of the UFV-GeoMobile
Centers of Education govern the Departments. system was built from the aggregation of a geospatial
The Academic Structure is divided into a number data set, kept by the university administration,
of Fields of Knowledge, which have different associated with a set of relational databases used by a
courses. Each course has a set of subjects which are variety of administrative systems, also maintained by
offered by departments. the institution. The geographic data have been
The context model has great importance to modified to fit formats of data handled by the Mobile
develop the application, as it was used as basis for GIS application. Initially, data were stored in the
the modeling of geographic database and the format of the AutoCAD system and were converted:
university campus. For this task, we used the UML- Area, Line and Point, respectively. Finally, the
GeoFrame model [6], which is a specific model for classes AerialView and ContourLine are perceived in
geo-graphic database. Subsequently, the conceptual the field view ( ). The first has spatial
model was implemented using DBMS PostGreSQL representation of the type GridCells ( ), whereas
with its spatial PostGIS extension. the second has representation of the type Isolines
The class diagram of Fig. 4 shows that the
( ).
system has classes with and without spatial
representation. According to the UML-GeoFrame
3.3 Mobile GIS Application
model, classes and sub-classes Clerck, Professor,
The graphical interface of Mobile GIS was
Admin Technician, Person, Student, Visitor,
developed using the framework Microsoft Visual
Calendar, Activity, Council and Type of Facility are
Studio 2005, C#.NET language and the Pocket PC
specializations of non-geographic objects ( ), i.e., 2003 emulator. SharpMap software was used to
with no spatial representation. The classes Building,
Thoroughfare and Facilities are perceived in object
view ( ) and have spatial representation of the type
display geo-spatial data, which is a set of controls developed to receive the parameters and pass them to
based on the platform .NET to build GIS applications the Spatial Queries Module or to the Context
in mobile devices [7]. Management Module. To illustrate these operations,
To allow access to information stored in the this work describes the option of locating a facility or
geographic database a Web Service was service, location a person and the mechanism that
implemented in Java (SOAP), using NetBeans IDE shows the geographic location of an activity to be
6.1 and the Glassfish server. For every feature performed.
available in the application of Mobile GIS, a To locate a service or facility, initially the user
corresponding operation in the Web Service was enters the full or part of the name of the desired item,
using the screen shown in Fig. 5-a. When typing the name using the appropriate screen. Clicking the
name and clicking on Search, the GetLocation Search button generates the operation GetPerson of
operation is called, as described in Table 1. the Web Service, which is detailed in Table 2. This
This operation receives as parameters the typed operation generates the parameters name and
name and the users coordinates (x,y) via GPS or via coordinates (x, y) of the user.
a mechanism implemented in Mobile GIS, which The operation GetPerson passes its parameters to
allows the users to indicate their location by inserting the Spatial Query Module, generating an SQL query
an icon on the map. This second choice was (Table 2), returning peoples names which
implemented so the user can use the UFV correspond to the entered name, the respective
GeoMobile application, even with a PDA without an UFVs council to which the person is linked, the
embedded GPS. distance of each council in relation to the user's
The operation GetLocation passes its parameters position and the coordinates of the center point of the
to the query module, generating a SQL query, also building in which the council is allocated. The
described in Table 1, which returns the names of selection made by the SQL query is returned to the
sites that match the name entered, the distance of mobile device, which displays a list of possible
each facility in relation to the user's position and the people who meet the entered name. By selecting one
coordinates of the buildings center point in which of the items in this list, the application indicates, via
the facility is allocated. The selection carried out by a small icon, the location of the council to which the
the SQL query is returned to the mobile device that chosen person is linked.
displays a list of available facilities (Fig. 5-a). By The mechanism to notify the Mobile GIS users
selecting one of the items in this list, the application on the geographic location of any activity registered
indicates, through a small icon on the map, the in their diaries was developed as a sensitive choice to
location of the chosen facility, as shown in Fig. 5-b. the users context. Initially, to have access to this
The operation to locate a person is similar to the feature the user must be identified in the system
process for identifying a service or facility. The using a login and password. From this moment,
location of a person is defined by the association of every minute the operation GetEvent is called, as in
the individual with her or his work within the UFV.
Initially the user enters the full or part of the persons
@WebMethod(operationName = "GetPerson")
public List<String> getPerson(@WebParam(name = "PersonName")
String PersonName, @WebParam(name = "x")
double x, @WebParam(name = "y")
double y) {
...
}
@WebMethod(operationName = "GetEvent")
public List<String> GetEvent(@WebParam(name = "login")
String login, @WebParam(name = "password")
String password, @WebParam(name = "actualTime")
Object actualTime) {
....
}
and presentation of raster and vector spatial data, as defining and obtaining context information.
well as dynamic data about mobile objects. The The use of ontologies in this work could be
contextual data used in GinisMobile is encoded better exploited if there were a mechanism to
according to defined XML schema and transferred handle the ontologies and infer new information
to the server for analysis and storage. On the client before returning them to the Mobile GIS user. This
side, XML profile is parsed and used to customize will be addressed in a future work.
user interface. Another feature that can be further exploited is
Considering the ideas and solutions presented the use of Geo Web Services, which are services
in the works described above, we propose an defined by the OGC (Open GIS Consortium) to
architecture for developing applications for context- address specifically geo-spatial data. This
aware Mobile GIS, which is described in detail in mechanism would avoid the need for installing an
the next chapter. The architecture proposed in this application on PDA, as it was done with the UFV-
paper differs from other studies by proposing the GeoMobile system. Instead, the Mobile GIS appli-
reuse of a domain-independent context model, cation could be accessed with a browser.
which is integrated to geo-spatial data management. However, the architecture here presented,
This feature allows the development of a Mobile together with the UFV-GeoMobile developed as
GIS capable of managing context information in case study, show how the use of a Mobile GIS
several areas of application. application capable of managing information in
context can be very useful, especially the ability to
5 CONCLUSIONS provide personalized information combined with
This work presented the specification of an the display of geo-spatial data. Thus, this work
architecture for the development of GIS-Mobile presents a very practical and feasible way to
systems capable of managing context information. develop applications for mobile GIS, presenting
The characteristics inherent in this type of solutions to address typical challenges of
application was studied in order to reach the applications involving geo-spatial data, context and
proposed solution, which includes: the use of Web mobile devices.
Services to allow remote access to information
from the mobile device, ontologies for context ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
modeling and use of geographic database to store
spatial data sets. This project was partially supported with funds
Using Web Services is an interesting solution from FAPEMIG - Foundation for the Support of
to solve problems of lack of computational Research of the State of Minas Gerais and CNPq /
resources in mobile devices. This allows the MCT / CT-Info.
implementation of more complex functionalities in
more robust servers. Another advantage of using 6 REFERENCES
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