Looking at human life, nowadays we can see that Online Social Networks are an integral
part of modern life. They can be categorized into different categories in terms
of the diverse range of services provided for their users. Although
Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs) can be mentioned as one of the most
popular subcategories between networks' users, we are witnessing the emergence
of other online networks including Event-Based Social Networks (EBSNs) and
Multimedia Online Social Networks (MOSNs). On the other hand, by 2021, it is
predicted that the number of objects which have internet connectivity and
processing capabilities will steadily rise as many as 6.5 times more than the
human number. The cutting-edge trends inspire us to develop a combination model
of LBSNs, IoT, and other spatial data. It would provide more functional and
realistic services than the mentioned technologies alone. For example,
involving an additional layer (users' smart belongings) to current
Location-Based Social Networks' structure brings us blinding lights. To
conclude, our combination model would not only let us take a necessary step
towards making context-aware recommendations in current LBSNs but also we can
think of other essential services from all different walks of life especially
crises management and environmental management.
In every society, we witness many harmful incidents that preparation to deal with
is on decision-makers and planners' duty. In general, the most important
necessity for them is aware of the current situation, in which spatial data has
the ability to supply their needs. Regard to development of technology, the
participation of the non-professional public in generation spatial information
has been increased. This type of data calls Volunteered Geographic Information
(VGI) and could be a precious alternative for the reference data due to
offering great features such as: free use of data, local knowledge and timely
creation, however, quality specification of data has a key role but VGI dataset
suffer from lack of it and has taken the attention of many researchers in GIS.
Although the dominant aspect of quality is fitness for the use which is
dependent on the project's goal or user's requirement, it is not considered
specifically and generally discussed. So we aim to perform a workflow to assess
the suitability of VGI dataset in specific usage to see whether this type of
data could meet the decision maker's need or not.Nowadays
urban utility networks are extremely important in our everyday lives as they
play a key role in the quality of life for citizens leaving in dense urban
areas. Critical events in such infrastructures are nationwide problems and also
amongst the most important and most expensive units for urban services
companies. The development of a sort of real-time reporting system where users
might report local failures will be sure of interest for decision-makers as
well as for citizens. It should be also noticed that the benefit of such VGI is
mutual. In fact, managers can employ volunteered citizens to submit different
reports about the utility incidents such as escape/spillage or leakage of a
substance, implosion/explosion or fire, escape of gas or steam, etc. Not only
official organizations should beneficiate from this real-time information
environment, but also people should also gain a benefit from such an
information system. For example, they may use its data for selecting a suitable
location for investments or purchasing a house, as well as having regular
reports and access to the utility network connected to their location. The
aforementioned problems led us to suggest the concept of volunteered data and
Volunteered Geographic Information environments to distribute native people
information as a faster and less costly way.
Context is whatever information that can be used to describe the situation of an entity
when the entity is relevant to the interaction between the human and
application. Context awareness is the ability of a system to understand changes
in context, the response to the change, and to use the change to apply to
content, reasoning, and presentation. First,
a needs-assessment should be done. Based on the needs-assessment different
projects about making geospatial services more context-aware will be defined.
These projects will have focused on context-awareness in different application
layers. Context-aware presentation of spatial data like the path and POIs in a
wayfinding service or context-aware generalization of street networks for
optimum path problems are some examples.
People spend most of their time in indoor environments. Location-based services in
indoor environments is a challenging issue due to the complexity of indoor
environments and low positioning accuracy or precision in these environments.
What makes researches about indoor positioning necessary is the need for the
improvement of the final results in terms of accuracy, reliability, real-time
and low cost, since choosing different approaches has different effects on the
final results. One of the solutions for these problems is utilizing indoor
environment constraints that are extracted from the indoor environment floor
plan. These constraints should be represented in a geometric, symbolic, or
semantic indoor location model. In terms of modeling, we are working on a
graph-based indoor data model, based on algebraic topology, for developing
context-aware services of location-based social networks in indoor spaces.We
will try to design a context-aware user guidance service using AR in indoor
spaces. Using Augmented Reality in providing information to users, enhances
their understanding of that information. But sometimes displaying a large
amount of information by AR may cause Confusion. So by exploiting context
awareness, the only necessary and required information will be displayed for
users. Another challenge we face is localization in
indoor spaces. As well, we will design a special seamless positioning device.
We are also using the integration
of different technologies such as Bluetooth, WLAN, MEMES sensor based methods,
and other technologies to improve the positioning of people in the indoor
space. The
integration of building information modelling (BIM) and geospatial information
system (GIS) would be another trend in this field. The most current studies of
BIM-GIS integration focus on the integration techniques but we are going to
focus on theories and methods for further data analysis and mathematic
modelling especially concerning indoor LBS and social networking.