Background
The project "Geospatial Info-Mobility Service by Real-Time Data-Integration and Generalisation" (GiMoDig) is funded from the European Union via the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme. The IST programme is a specific programme for research, technological development and demonstration on a user-friendly information society. The GiMoDig-project (IST-2000-30090) is a shared-cost RTD project, under the action line CPA3: Ubiquitous and intelligent info-mobility and geo-information systems.
Resources
GiMoDig started on the 1st of November, 2001 and its duration will be 3 years. The personal resources for the project cover 19 person years. The Finnish Geodetic Institute acts as a coordinator for the project. The other participants are University of Hanover, Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (Germany), National Survey and Cadastre - Denmark, National Land Survey of Sweden and National Land Survey of Finland.
Objectives
The objective of the project is to develop methods for delivering geospatial data to a mobile user by means of real-time data-integration and generalisation. The project aims to a seamless data service infrastructure providing access, through a common interface, to topographic geo-databases maintained by the national mapping agencies. The sub-objectives comprise of developing methods for real-time generalisation, integration of national primary geo-databases by means of thematic harmonisation, and real-time transformation of the data to a common EUREF-based co-ordinate system for seamless geometric representation. Emerging standards, like XML, are used for transferring vector-formatted spatial data in the Web. A study on small-display cartography, and an analysis on the requirements of the mobile use of geospatial data are carried out. The approach is tested using a prototype system in a multinational context.
Workplan
In the beginning of the GiMoDig project a user requirements analysis is carried out to identify a representative set of use cases for investigating the essential user needs in varying situations of mobile use of map data. Feedback from real user groups is gathered during the project for effective validation of the service to be developed. Issues related to the small-display cartography are investigated to find out how the user requirements can be satisfied by applying different cartographic visualisations, depending on the specific characteristics of mobile devices having small displays. The general system architecture is defined for testing the approach of real-time integration and generalisation of geospatial data. A special emphasis is put on the utilisation of XML-based representation for transferring vector-formatted geospatial data. A global schema is defined for the integration of national primary geospatial databases. Thematic integration is realised through the development of a global schema, while the usage of a common, EUREF-based co-ordinate system supports seamless geometric integration. A common access interface, based on emerging standards, is designed and implemented to the primary topographic databases maintained by national mapping agencies, to facilitate the testing of the integration approach in a multinational context. In the research concentrating on real-time generalisation advanced methods are investigated for making cartographic generalisation in real time. Consideration is also given to the analysis of the relative merits of a multiple representation database approach on one hand, and the real-time generalisation methods on the other. The most promising methods are tested by integrating them into the prototype system.
