Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
rapidly than predicted. A few organizations (perhaps only two) will compete to
offer a comprehensive Whereness support service globally. It will, hopefully, be
fully Semantic Web compliant and conform to a set of open standards that will be
agreed as the Whereness ontology,
Most people and organizations will have accounts with one or more
Whereness providers, the most basic of which will be free to use (but will be paid
for by a mix of advertising, taxation, and revenue sharing with dependent services
such as media sales, telephony and messaging, LBS, and ITS). The service will
maintain a real-time and accurate log of position with an associated personal
profile that will be under the direct control of the user (except in certain countries
where government regulations will limit control or where the services will be
managed through the government).
More advanced value-added services will also be available to businesses and
will take the place of many current enterprise systems concerning supply chain
management, logistics, workforce management, fleet management, and access
security. Special niche services will be offered to the emergency services and the
military that will compliment dedicated systems.
Overall it can be expected that Whereness may well follow the same
commercial exploitation routes as the Internet and cellular radio. Although
probably not quite as large in overall economic impact, Whereness may become a
true utility and so ubiquitous it is taken for granted.
9.6 A Whereness “To-do” List for Today
This topic is visionary, but visions are of little value without action. There is
currently a wide gulf between what is possible and what is available today.
Clearly, some concrete exploitation route maps are needed.
There are two key centralized services needed before Whereness can really
start: first, commitment to the central Whereness service provision, and second,
commitment to the management of the ubiquitous mapping content. The
Whereness services are likely to be operated by large ICT organizations with
global reach, whereas the mapping may be a more collaborative initiative, perhaps
including aspects of OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia.
Whereness service provision will need to focus on system convergence, in
particular taking feeds from all communications network providers and other
organizations operating sensing, ticketing, surveillance, smart building systems,
and so forth. GNSS service provision will also need to be included. Galileo
services could, for example, be a stand-alone service and as part of a converged
Whereness service bundle. Close cooperation will be needed with device
manufacturers and these will be increasingly adding new wireless and sensor
technology to their platforms.
The general public will be more demanding of Web services based on
Whereness. Maps and images will be expected to be real time and be integrated
 
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