Bringing geography closer to people’s apprehension of the world has long been a goal\udof GIScience. Contextual and pervasive computing together with low cost technologies\udfor positioning have provided an ideal opportunity to realise such ambitions\udbecause they allow geographic representations of the world to be brought close to\udindividuals’ engagement with it. Location based services (LBS) are an example\udof such a technology. They emphasise the location of a person to scope both the\udcontents and presentation of information in ways that are contextually relevant.\udHowever, a problem exists that in the rush to tackle the complex set of technical\udand economic issues related to the deployment of such services, fundamental\udconsiderations about how geography should be presented and represented are often\udmissing. Instead, more conventional spatial models for representing geographic and\udcartographic information have been shoe-horned to fit the purpose without a full\udconsideration of how appropriate they may be. These tend to detach the user of the\udinformation from its material origins presenting universal, and static viewpoints in\udcontrast to the dynamic and ego-centric perspectives innate to the mobile situations\udwhere LBS are employed.\udThis work examines these issues through a consideration of the problem of defining\ud‘location’. To undertake this the traditional geographic distinctions of Space,\udPlace, and Region are drawn on. These are treated both as concepts needing to be\uddelineated and, perhaps more importantly, as different geographic perspectives that\udare employed when people conceive the world, and therefore as paradigms for informing\udLBS design. A central thesis posited is that at different times in the design\udand use of an LBS, each of these has a more or less important role in how location\udand locationally scoped information needs to be represented and portrayed.\udThe research documented has been undertaken within the context of the joint\udEuropean project ‘WebPark’, which has developed a set of location-based services\udfor visitors to protected and natural areas. A specific focus of the work described\udhere has been the realisation of an application that allows visitors to access information\udabout flora and fauna in the Swiss National Park. The description of the\udresearch proceeds by first examining, through the literature, how the triad of Space,\udPlace and Region relate to different aspects of LBS from a theoretical basis. Based\udon these considerations, content analysis of a collection of visitors’ questions is performed.\udThis considers the ways in which visitors pose questions in protected areas\udand how these questions are related to the individual’s context. These analyses are\udii Abstract\udthen synthesised to formulate a conceptual basis that informs the design of the flora\udand fauna service. The main body of the work is then presented. Here, the Model,\udView, Controller (MVC) design pattern common to software engineering is used as\udan explicative framework for organising the different aspects of the work. The Model\udsection deals with how spatial and non-geographically referenced data are handled\udand how location can be modelled with respect to these. In particular, the perspective\udof Region is found to be highly pertinent for defining locations as semantically\udrelevant geographic entities. In the Controller section the interactional facets of the\udservice are considered, drawing on the earlier content analysis. The View section\udconsiders the importance of the situational aspects of place in portraying locations\udand information related to them. Here the problem dealt with is how to maintain\udthe role of the map view as a dynamic interface for interaction and orientation under\udthe stresses imposed by cartographic symbolisation. A set of related techniques\udthat draw on continuous variable scale transformations are developed. These are\udconstrained according to the structural features of the map and the intrinsic properties\udof the transformed map space. A number of experiments are presented that\udallow qualitative and quantitative comparisons to be made between the different\udtechniques. Finally, a discussion of the application is made, drawing on the results\udof user testing performed in the park. Conclusions concerning the appropriateness\udof the techniques to the development of location based services are then provided.
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