Location-based services in Nature areas
by Eduardo Dias
Last summer, the visitors to the Ecomare dune park (in Texel) could try out an
innovative information system, LEDI (Location Entertainment and Didactic Information). LEDI is a mobile
information system that provides visitors of natural areas and parks with information about their surroundings
using smart phones and GPS.
The system was developed by a strong consortium:
- Geodan (www.geodan.nl)
was the project coordinator and responsible for the data preparation;
- Ecomare (www.ecomare.nl)
is the information and visitors center for the Noordzee and Waddenzee and was in charge of the
content;
- Camineo (www.camineo.fr)
is a spin-off company of the successful EC project webpark (www.webparkservices.info)
and was responsible for the software development, and
- the SPINlab (www.spinlab.vu.nl)
was involved in the testing and evaluation of the application.
Eduardo Dias (one of the Unigis Amsterdam Tutors) was actively involved in the
development and testing of the mobile application. Around 500 visitors had a first hand experience on the advantages
of coupling spatial-location to digital content.
The visitors are equipped with smartphones connected to a GPS receiver. Then a "cuckoo's call" sound warns the
wanderers to something interesting around them (e.g. the "location of rabbit holes along the path" or
"explanations about a plant or landscape particularity are some of the information you can expect to find in LEDI.
If you missed your opportunity this summer... then, don't worry! You will be able to try it yourself next summer.
A nice article about this project appeared in the 'Texelse Courant'. You can read it
here
(it's in Dutch).
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