Experimental development of a prototype for Mobile Environmental Information Systems (MEIS)

Abstract

Environmental information systems (EIS) have been in professional use for quite a long time. Applications of this domain often include features of quite common location based services (LBS). This means utilization of space-, time- and content-oriented data for positioning and routing services with various maps. Firstly, new integrated technology and lower prices of related technology have made it possible for users to benefit from new mobile services with reasonable cost. Secondly, new kinds of ambient aware applications are active research and development topics. We define mobile environmental information systems (MEIS) as integrated mobile information systems used to study, monitor and exploit the nature as well as to guide users like tourists and biologists in the nature. In this paper we present our research in progress, where we have built the first MEIS prototype to be used as a basis for MEIS services that exploit LBS and ambient awareness. The main purpose of this experiment has been to explore the technologies and methods for efficient building of easily extendable mobile platforms that would support main MEIS functionalities. According to our literature survey no similar technical solution as a mobile phone service did not exist. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.