 CRUMPET
(Creation of User-friendly Mobile services Personalized for Tourism) is
an EU-funded project within the IST framework aiming to implement,
validate, and test tourism-related value-added services for nomadic
users across mobile and fixed networks. Agent technology for seamlessly
accessible nomadic services is one of the core interests in CRUMPET.
Partners from Germany, Finland, the UK, and Portugal are working on a
platform for tourism-related services supporting intelligent, anytime,
anyplace communication suitable for networks like those a typical
tourist user might be exposed to now and in the near future (including
IP networks, Wireless LAN, and mobile networks supporting WAP
technology: GSM, GPRS, and UMTS). In contrast to other projects at EML,
the target devices will be lightweight terminals such as
next-generation mobile phones and PDAs. The implementation will be based on a standards-compliant open
source agent framework, extended to support nomadic applications,
devices, and networks.
Main features of the CRUMPET approach include:
- Services that will be trialled and evaluated by multiple mobile service providers;
- Service content that will be tourism-related, supporting intelligent, anytime, anyplace communication;
- Adaptive nomadic services responding to underlying dynamic
characteristics, such as network Quality of Service and physical
location;
- Aservice architecture implementation that will be standards-based
and made available at the end of the project as (mostly) publicly
available open source code;
- Suitability for networks that will be those that a typical tourist
user might be exposed to now and in the near future (including IP
networks, Wireless LAN, and mobile networks supporting WAP technology:
GSM, GPRS, and UMTS);
- Suitability for a wide range of terminal types, including next generation mobile phone / PDA / PC hybrid terminals.
The implementation will be developed using best practice, including
"open source for open standards" development, developing generic
re-usable components on an open distributed architecture. During the
trial phase of the project, an assessment will be made of the
scalability, robustness, and time-to-market advantages of the approach.
We started our work on this two-year project in October 2000. EML´s
part in the consortium is to develop a service-oriented architecture to
establish location-aware tourism services and applications by using
contextual information such as presence, location (e.g. GPS), and
user-preferences (e.g. service-specific preferences and preferences
associated with different contexts) to intelligently adapt service
delivery. Recent research has focused on the handling and application
of geographic information (GI) technologies for tourism over the web.
Recently the OpenGIS Consortium has announced two new important
specifications: the Web Mapping Interface Specification and the
Geographic Markup Language (GML). GML is an XML version of the
OpenGIS-Simple feature specification: a specification for vector based
map-content (geographic features) for GIS systems. This geographical
information is a crucial feature of tourism applications as every user
will want his/her individualized information, with latest details on
such topics as traffic, weather, sights, and availability of services
within the town, navigation aid and historical and economic background
information.
The Open-GIS Web-mapping standardization effort is a first general
step towards an open standard for giving transparent access to
heterogeneous geographical data and geo-processing resources in a
networked environment. It has not been applied to tourism yet. Also,
tools necessary to support widespread use of such technologies are not
yet available. Work on CRUMPET will take the use of geographical
information technology one step further by developing an integrated,
spatially enriched information architecture through the intensive use
of distributed intelligent agent technology based on the FIPA standard.
Project Homepage
http://www.ist-crumpet.org/
Sponsors
- The European Commission, Fifth (EC) Framework Programme - Creating a user-friendly information society (IST)
- Klaus Tschira Foundation
Partners
Queen Mary & Westfield College, London, UK
Emorphia, London, UK
GMD – Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik GmbH, Germany
Portugal Telecom Inovação, S.A, Portugal
Sonera Ltd., Finland
University of Helsinki, Finland
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