Location- and time-based information delivery in tourism

Today's mobile devices allow end users to get information related to a particular domain based on their current location, such as the fastest route to the nearest drugstore. However, in such Location-Based Services (LBS), richer and more targeted information is desirable. In many applications, end users would like to be notified about relevant events or places to visit in the near future according to their profile. They also do not wish to get the same information many times unless they explicitly ask for it. In this paper, we describe our system, TIP (Tourism Information Provider), which delivers various types of information to mobile devices based on location, time, profile of end users, and their "history", i.e., their accumulated knowledge. The system hinges on a hierarchical semantic geospatial model as well as on an Event Notification System (ENS).