NFC solution for the development of smart scenarios supporting tourism applications and surfing in urban environments

Abstract

Ubiquitous applications have increased during the last decade thanks to the development of communication and mobile technologies. These applications cover a wide spectrum of problems, sectors, scenarios and environments that aim to build smart environments supporting many kinds of human interactions. Tourism plays a substantial role in the economies of some cities and countries. Tourism can secure employment, foreign exchange, investment and regional development, and therefore a research area where the development of ubiquitous applications is having a great interest. In this paper, we describe a pervasive solution for the innovation of the touristic sector offering the users/visitors, in a way easy, intuitive and context-awareness, support for the navigation and localization in urban smart scenarios. The solution is based in the use of Near Field Communication Technology and Smart Posters spread up along the smart environments. The model architecture is described as well as the developed software. Application to tourism in the city of Córdoba is presented. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.