The Concept Of Location Based Services
A certain service that is offered to the users based on their locations is called Location Based Service. It is a software level service that uses location data to control features. LBS uses real time geo-data from a mobile device or smartphones to provide information, entertainment or security. With the growth of location-based services (LBS) in mobile computing, many businesses are interested in analysing user location data to better understand patterns and relationships. In general, mobile clients must expose their exact location information to an LBS provider before receiving their desired services. LBS include services to identify the location of a person or object, such as the nearest point of interest (POI) or the whereabouts of a friend or employee. Typical LBS applications include road navigation and vehicle tracking services. As LBS have become more numerous and diverse, user privacy violations have become more commonplace.
The market success of LBS benefits from its rich services. Considering various typical functions and objectives, we classify LBSs into two categories, that is, elementary services and derivative services. Navigation and search for POIs are typical elementary LBSs. The former elementary service takes advantage of positioning systems to obtain geographical locations of users and destinations for guiding people, which is the main function of Google Maps, Baidu Map, and AutoNavi Map. This kind of service originated from in-car navigation systems and now prevails in the mobile device market for navigating pedestrians. Combining with visualization techniques such as virtual reality and augmented reality, the customer experience of navigation could be improved greatly. The latter elementary service provides POIs for a user within his or her region of interest (ROI). Such a service can help the user discover unknown environmental resources, which is particularly useful when s/he reaches a new city. Typical applications of this kind of service include Yelp, AroundMe, and Dianping. Based on elementary services, many derivative ones are being developed, providingmore complicated functions for convenience in people’s lives. Typical derivative LBSs consist of guiding, tracking, mobile commerce, location-based games, and solomo applications.
Depending on the particular spots or items, the first derivative LBS aims at guiding users either to go somewhere or to fetch something. For example, through mining big data from a number of high-quality web sources, Triposo acts as a travel guide for tourists to discover top attractions as well as hidden gems at scale; ParkMe provides real-time information on available parking spots and meters for citizens and guides them to the nearest entrance; and as a representative sharing economy application, Mobike also offers the guide function to lead citizens for finding the nearest available bicycles.
The second important derivative LBS is tracking, which observes the geographic whereabouts of people or objects on the move and provides trajectories expressed by a timely ordered sequence of respective locations to users or analysts for further mining or study. Applications include Endomondo, CityMapper, and Baidu Commuter. Drawing support from GPS embedded in smartphones, Endomondo accurately records a user’s sports information (e. g. , trajectory and velocity) and returns the user’s burned calories during exercise. CityMapper keeps track of public transport trajectories (e. g. , buses, metros, and ships) and hence facilitates citizens acquiring departure, arrival, and transfer information of vehicles. Baidu Commuter tracks the real-time traffic volume of cities, providing passing time, length, and road condition of each route and calculating commute programs for users.
