challenges and prospects

challenges #

Some social, technical and industry factors are affecting the development of mobile GIS, including location privacy, security and industry standards.

1. location privacy

The location of mobile GIS can be tracked, which raises privacy concerns among users. For some people, such as express delivery drivers, field workers, etc., allowing their unit to monitor their location is a necessity of work. However, for many other users, their location information is considered a form of privacy and has the right to be protected. Without appropriate protection measures, their location information may be misused, leading to violations of user rights. For example, infer the user’s personal preferences, health status, political opinions, etc. Users may frequently receive unauthorized ads, be followed or harassed by fans and others, and even be physically attacked.

Matt Duckham and Lars Kulik(2007) summarized four ways to protect mobile users ‘location privacy and pointed out that it is still difficult to fully implement these methods at the technical and other levels:

• Regulatory strategy: Require mobile service and software and hardware operators to inform users why, what information is collected, and what purpose is used for before collecting user information, and obtain user consent to avoid obtaining, disclosing and using user location information without the user’s explicit authorization;

• Privacy settings: Use credit-based mechanisms, such as the W3C’s “Platform for Privacy Preferences”(P3P), to allow users to set the level of privacy protection they are willing to accept, and allow clients and servers of Internet applications to automatically abide by user settings and restrict usage methods that exceed user settings;

• Anonymity method: Separate location information from the user’s personally identifying information (such as name and phone number);

• Fuzzy processing: Reduce the accuracy of location information.

2. security

The large number of mobile phones and the important private and business information stored therein, including phone books, text messages, email accounts, GIS data, personal photos and videos, and even bank accounts, make mobile phones an attractive target for attack. Wireless communications, especially those free Wi-Fi, are also vulnerable to intrusion and monitoring. In addition, mobile devices are relatively small and can easily be lost or stolen. If your mobile device is stolen, you may receive high phone bills and, more importantly, you may lose the above-mentioned sensitive information, such as your customer address book, which may lead to the disclosure of business data and even the intrusion of departmental databases and important computer systems.

Mobile GIS users should, like desktop users, pay attention to using passwords to lock screens, not opening suspicious attachments, not installing illegal software, and not clicking on suspicious URL links. Mobile operators can track mobile phones, and some operators provide the “find my phone” feature. After a mobile phone is lost, users should contact the operator as soon as possible. There are also services that allow users to remotely issue instructions to their phones to delete stored data. Highly confidential information can be kept secret using a dedicated cellular network or even a dedicated encryption mechanism.

3. Lack of standards and differences in platforms

Developing cross-platform mobile GIS faces multi-level problems. HTML5 provides an application development standard based on a browser platform, but the actual effect of HTML5 is still difficult to compare with local development methods. Local development methods lack standards, and different mobile operating systems provide different programming interfaces, resulting in the need to adopt different development technologies on different platforms, and even the developed systems have different functions and usage methods. Many countries have built 3G or 4G wireless networks, but different countries, or even different operators in the same country, use different standards, often making your mobile device impossible to use in another country or region. In addition, wireless data transmission speeds vary greatly in different countries or regions.

Mobile platforms are in a rapid “transformation” stage. Providers in every link hope to improve their competitiveness by providing special services, but the relevant standards cannot keep up, and it will take a long time for standards bodies to propose and formulate relevant standards.

Moving towards Ubiquitous GIS #

The development of mobile GIS will greatly help the development of many disciplines and application fields, including augmented reality, publicly participatory GIS, dynamic demographics, daily behavior analysis, four-dimensional GIS, and ubiquitous GIS.

1. augmented reality

Augmented reality superimposes information from databases and information perceived by people, thereby providing people with information that cannot be directly known in reality (Longley et al., 2005). Augmented reality is increasingly using mobile GIS to read other information about the location from the Internet based on where the user is currently located and the direction they are facing, and display it on people’s mobile phones to supplement what users cannot directly feel on the spot. information.

Augmented reality technology assisted by mobile GIS-can be used in many aspects. In terms of medical care, it can supplement people’s senses that are disabled or impaired in some way. For example, it can lead the way for blind people so that they can feel their place and travel around campus. For example, through helmet-mounted displays, enhanced display technology can superimpose the historical landscape and future planning and design information of tourists ‘attractions on the images seen by tourists themselves, allowing people to see the past and the future.

2. Public participation in GIS and spontaneous geographical information

Public participation in GIS is to promote GIS into the hands of the public so that they can also use GIS to submit information and participate in decision-making. The popularization of mobile phones has become the best platform for promoting GIS. Mobile GIS not only allows the general public to use maps, but also turns every mobile phone user into a mobile sensor. It can use the power and participation of the public to achieve real-time monitoring of the world’s environment and collect what the public sees and thinks. Opinions and suggestions.

3. Dynamic demographic and human behavior analysis

Demographic information collected by agencies such as the Census Bureau is generally static, however, the population is constantly moving. For example, in a city, the population density of each region changes constantly from morning to night.

Because mobile phones have positioning and tracking functions, each mobile phone user leaves a “digital trajectory”. By collecting and analyzing these digital trajectories, the spatio-temporal dynamic pattern of the population can be calculated. This information has many applications, including studying human behavior, calculating real-time street traffic flows and speeds, planning transportation facilities, selecting retail store locations, and simulating the spread of infectious diseases.

4. Four-dimensional GIS

Mobile GIS can be used by people anytime and anywhere to obtain the latest information from the server, and can also record and upload the ever-changing events in the field to the server in a timely manner. This dynamic and real-time capability greatly improves the timeliness of geographical information, helping GIS expand from three-dimensional (Z, F, and Z) to four-dimensional (Z, F, Z, and time)(Drummond ,Joao,and Billen, 2007).

The number of global mobile communication users reached 6 billion at the end of 2011 (International Telecommunication Union,2011). Looking to the future, mobile devices such as mobile phones will be further popularized. Fourth-generation wireless communication (4G) technology has been put into widespread use in many countries. The development of mobile computing will make mobile phones smarter and promote the realization of ubiquitous computing. In a pervasive computing environment, information services are ubiquitous and transparent, allowing people to obtain information services at any time, anywhere, or even without being aware of it. The combination of mobile GIS and ubiquitous computing enables ubiquitous GIS, allowing everyone to use GIS anytime, anywhere.