PARAMOUNT Experiences and Results of a LBS Prototype for Mountaineers

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1 PARAMOUNT Experiences and Results of a LBS Prototype for Mountaineers Erwin Löhnert, Heiko Mundle, Elmar Wittmann, Günter Heinrichs IfEN Gesellschaft für Satellitennavigation mbh (IfEN GmbH), D Poing, Germany BIOGRAPHIES Erwin Löhnert received a diploma in Aerospace Engineering in 1993 from the Munich University of Technology. In 1994 he joined the Institute of Navigation and Geodesy of the University of the Bundeswehr Munich as a Research Associate, working mainly for aerogravimetry and GPS/INS integration. In 2000 he joined IfEN GmbH as a Project Manager for integrity determination. Since 2001 he is Head of the Mobile Applications & Services department, managing the PARAMOUNT project. Heiko Mundle has received his Dipl-Ing(FH) in Geomatics from the University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe, Germany, in From 2000 to 2002 Heiko Mundle was working for blaxxun interactive, Munich and was involved in the development of Internet communities and virtual worlds software. Since July 2002 Heiko Mundle has been working at IfEN GmbH focusing on software development for location base services. Elmar Wittmann received a diploma in surveying major subject geodesy and satellite geodesy in 2000 from the Munich University of Technology and then joined the IfEN GmbH, where he is now working as a project engineer in the field of GPS/Galileo satellite navigation and software development for mobile applications. Dr. Günter Heinrichs received a Dipl.-Ing. degree in Communications Engineering from the University of Applied Science Aachen, a Dipl.-Ing. degree in Data Processing Engineering and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University Paderborn. In 1996 he joined MAN Technologie AG where he has served as the head and R&D manager of the satellite navigation department from 1999 to April In May 2002 he joined IFEN GmbH, Poing, Germany, where he is currently the head of business development and R&D management. ABSTRACT The rapid development in the fields of mobile technologies regarding hardware as well as the corresponding infrastructure provides a strong basis for the establishment of new appropriate services aiming on the special needs of people on the move, in particular tourists visiting unfamiliar places. Those needs include for instance up-to-date information and further support concerning e.g. guidance or help in critical situations. This paper gives an overview on the EC funded project Public Safety & Commercial Info Mobility Applications & Services in the Mountains (PARAMOUNT), in which such a location based service (LBS) prototype was developed, focusing especially on the needs of mountain tourists in the Alps and Pyrenees. A so-called electronic TourGuide consisting of Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and other hardware components wirelessly connected to the PARAMOUNT service via Internet assists the mountaineer in the position, orientation and navigation task, delivers environmental and additional information and helps in an emergency situation or even prevents it. In order to provide the hiker with relevant information and to support him on his way e.g. to the mountaintop, three different core services have been developed within the project, namely INFOTOUR, SAFETOUR and DATATOUR. INFOTOUR provides valuable information. SAFETOUR aims to increase the safety of the user. Finally DATATOUR involves the users in updating and completion of the service database. Beside the presentation of the overall system architecture the paper will focus especially on the experiences and results obtained during the

2 project s test and demonstration phase of the prototype service in a regional test area of the Bavarian Alps. INTRODUCTION PARAMOUNT is a mobile navigation and information system prototype. It has been designed focussing especially on the needs of hikers and wanderers on the one hand and the mountain rescue services on the other hand. This includes also a support tool for controlling and coordinating the SAR (Search-and-Rescue) missions of the mountain rescue teams. The prototype is funded by the European Commission and has been developed by an international consortium of 5 partners. The project has started in 02/2002 and will be finished in 10/2003. OBJECTIVES AND MOTIVATION The project is driven by the motivation to contribute to the improvement of user-friendly info-mobility services by combining technologies from the fields of satellite navigation, telecommunications and geo-information. This includes the following main objectives: - Development of a Location Based Service (LBS) prototype providing appropriate information and features for mountain hikers and wanderers - Integration of support and control facilities for mountain rescue services - Demonstration and proof of feasibility of such a combined system especially for mountainous areas. THE PARAMOUNT SERVICES The location-based service prototype integrates positioning, navigation, communication, coordination and information services based on compact hardware components and mobile communication technology. The service demonstrator shows that state-of-the-art technology can be used to establish user-friendly services, which can lead to a significant improvement of comfort and safety of millions of people, who are going to the mountains of the Alps and Pyrenees. Three different kinds of core services were developed within PARAMOUNT (Figure 1): INFOTOUR is for guiding, routing and informing the user. It provides fundamental services, which allow the user to access dedicated information at Figure 1: PARAMOUNT System Overview

3 home and in particular on the mountains. The user requests maps of different scales and extent from the INFOTOUR server. He/she can also ask for so called points of interest touristic relevant destinations, e.g. summits, public transportation stations, huts and hotels. After selecting a destination the service determines the best route. If the user gets lost for example due to poor weather visibility the user can request the route back to a trail. If the weather becomes too bad for walking or if the user is exhausted and needs to rest, the system even finds the route to the nearest hut. The hiker can choose to be guided along these routes to find his/her way more easily. Besides the user will have access to local weather forecasts as well as common tourist information depending on his/her position. For more intuitive view of the chosen trail, the user can request from the server a 3D picture of the surrounding hills with an emphasised trail on it. The contents are at different dynamic levels. Firstly long-term data like 3-D geographic data (trails, height data ) and restaurants. Secondly mediumterm data like local (cultural) events, timetables and opening hours of mountain huts. Thirdly short-term data in particular avalanche prediction and weather forecasts. Last but not least instant content. Off- Board routing belongs to that. SAFETOUR provides in addition to the information described above especially safety relevant data. The usual mountaineer can send an emergency call including his/her current position in case of emergency. If a hiker becomes witness of an accident he is enabled to send a call and define the position of the victim on the map. Furthermore SAFETOUR tracks mountaineers in critical environments and in dangerous terrain. For the support of the search-and-rescue (SAR) organisations a so-called SAR Centre client (see Figure 2) was developed. Using this application a coordinator in the SAR centre can track the movements of his rescue teams on a map as well as in a 3D environment and access several information concerning the status of the operation. It's understood that the rescue teams can use all of the INFOTOUR features for routing and guidance, as well. To allow for an efficient and appropriate help for the tourist in case of an emergency it is useful for the rescue people to have some relevant information on the general state of his health, e.g. an existing cardiac insufficiency or the need for special medicine. Willing users can store this information on the server In the Pyrenees additional to these safety features avalanche forecasting has been implemented to Figure 2: Screenshot of SAR Centre Client

4 give back country skiers more regional and up-todate avalanche hazards. The generation process of an avalanche hazard bulletin has been systematized and semi-automated. In-field user observations, which will be done by many PARAMOUNT users, are used as extra local input data. Above all the avalanche path maps are integrated with the temporal information of the bulletin. To solve the geographic interpretation difficulties the bulletin is represented in easy readable diagrams and maps (see Figure 3). The user can choose to overlay the avalanche prediction layer onto the topographic maps. for a configuration as flexible as possible. The basic terminal for the TourGuide application is a Pocket PC with additional modules for the navigation and communication tasks. These modules can be attached to the Pocket PC or already be integrated (e.g. a smart phone with integrated communication module). Basically the following components are required: - Pocket PC resp. Pocket PC Phone. Depending on the model an additional expansion pack may be necessary for inserting the external modules - GPRS communication unit, either already integrated in the Pocket PC or as separate device. This can be e.g. a GPRS capable mobile phone with Bluetooth interface (for a wireless communication) or a GPRS modem card to be plugged into the Pocket PC. - GPS navigation unit Two of the tested arrangements are shown in Figure 4. The first one is the standard hardware for leisure hikers. It consists of an ipaq, a GPRS modem and GPS receiver CompactFlash card. The second one is designed for professional use of the search and rescue teams. The small Bluetooth GPS receiver can be put into a pocket or backpack. The more robust PDA with integrated GPRS modem is shock- and waterproof. Figure 3: Avalanche forecasting map DATATOUR directly involves the PARAMOUNT users in the data acquisition and maintaining process. As this is a critical and security sensitive matter this service will only be available to a group of registered users. This group will collect the following information: - Logging the used trail to update the trail network and derive new trails - Information on severity of trails (personal evaluation) to perform a more specific routing - Capturing/updating information on Points of Interest to ensure an up-to-date INFOTOUR service The processing and verification of the collected data will be performed partly-automatically on server side. DATATOUR allows reducing the maintenance costs of database necessary for all other services. The hiker accesses these services with the mobile client called TourGuide. Its hardware is based on common-of-the-shelf components in order to allow Figure 4: Standard Hardware (left), Ruggedised outdoor HW (e.g. for SAR teams) (right) The TourGuide application software (Figure 5) has been developed for the Windows CE based Pocket PC operating system of Microsoft. All components have been implemented in C++ using the development environment Microsoft embedded Visual C The Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the application has been designed for three different

5 user languages: English (original version), German and Spanish. selected as the German test area are depicted in Figure 8. As it can be easily seen from the left hand image there are in fact some areas with a limited availability of GPS for certain time due to the rough terrain. This poor coverage could be completely remedied with the additional use of the future Galileo system (full operation targeted for 2008) according to the results depicted in the right hand figure. Figure 5: TourGuide software screenshots RESULTS OF AVAILABILITY ANALYSIS Since the provision of the PARAMOUNT services requires the availability of GPS, GSM/GPRS and GIS (summarized as G3), investigations and simulations for the Alps and Pyrenees have been performed in order to identify potential pilot areas, where PARAMOUNT can be demonstrated. The GPS availability resp. visibility analysis for the Alps, using the digital terrain model (DTM) DTED0 with a grid resolution of about 900 m and a computation grid of about 2 km resulted in the Figure 6. Some more detailed simulations have been performed on local level for a few particular candidate areas. Given the used high resolution of 30 m (for the DTM as well as the computation grid) the significance of the obtained results is understandably higher than the less detailed overall results. The simulation outcomes for the Sudelfeld area (Bavaria, Germany) that has been finally Figure 7: Test area of Sudelfeld (GER) map and terrain model Figure 8: Minimum number of satellites: Local GPS (left) and GPS + Galileo (right) availability simulations for Sudelfeld area Figure 6: GPS availability analysis: minimum number of GPS satellites visible in the Alps

6 Figure 9: GSM/GPRS coverage in the Alps (Fig. I) and overall G3 availability (Fig. II) Summarizing the results of the provider-based GSM/GPRS availability analysis over the whole areas of interest, i.e. the maps/data used are based on the estimated coverages supplied by the mobile phone providers, it can be stated that wide parts of the mountainous regions of Alps and Pyrenees are covered by the mobile radio signals. However, there are of course also a considerable number of significant gaps, especially in areas with very rough terrain (Figure 9). In general the availability is very well in the valleys and along the flanking slopes and is partly decreasing sometimes in more remote areas in the high mountains. Especially in areas of high touristic relevance the availability is mainly quite satisfying. Furthermore many mobile phone providers continue to expand their networks also in the mountainous regions by installing additional base stations due to the increased attractiveness of this region by people searching for recreation and fun. However, a complete availability of terrestrial GSM signals will probably never be achieved. With respect to Figure 9 it has to be noted that the relatively low overall G3 coverage is due to the fact that it was assumed that all required GIS data for PARAMOUNT must already be available in digital form, i.e. trails and points of interest like huts, summits etc. This is, of course, not the case for significant portions of the Alps (the areas not shown in green Figure 9/II). However, the GIS availability investigation performed showed that the required digital terrain models, vector and raster based data is widely available throughout the Alps and Pyrenees. In order to actually provide the service, additional data on trails and points of interest will have to be acquired for certain areas in the Alps. FURTHER EXPERIENCE AND TEST RESULTS The analysis of the GPRS availability showed, that there are of course gaps in remote mountainous regions. But for areas of high touristic relevance like hiking and skiing resorts with a lot of visitors GPRS is available to a large extent. In the test area Sudelfeld (German Alps) there are only gaps in very rough terrain. To avoid lack of service it has been necessary to make an effort in the client/server trade-off. During the tests a good overall GPS availability was observed. Problems encountered in very severe environment like steep canyons or ravines etc. could be remedied in the future with the additional use of Galileo. The use of common-of-the-shelf GPS receiver modules allows to extend a Pocket PC for a convenient hardware solution. Modules in Compact Flash format as well as Bluetooth receivers can be connected easily via COM port and the NMEA interface standard. GPS heading values are sufficient at normal hiking speed; the hiker only needs to walk a few foot steps to receive a good heading accuracy. Of course the heading information is not reliable when the hiker stops and turns left/right, because then he has a velocity close to zero. Tests undertaken with an additional digital compass serially connected to the TourGuide hardware in fact eliminated this behaviour and yielded good results. However, any use of additional hardware increases costs and decreases e.g. the run-time of the battery. Thus, pros and cons have to be traded-off thoroughly.

7 The G3 analysis performed showed that the concurrently availability of GPRS, GPS and GIS is quite promising for many areas of the Alps and Pyrenees, especially in the areas of high touristic relevance. PARAMOUNT was extensively tested in the test phase between March and July of Not only internal test by the consortium were carried out but also with interested hikers as well as with SAR representatives. The external testers embraced the TourGuide hardware and software and liked the functionality and the compact size of the equipment. During the test phase it was experienced that the battery capacity is in fact well sufficient for day trips, however for multiple day trips it is necessary to recharge the batteries for each further day. The SAR members attested that the SAFETOUR features implemented in PARAMOUNT are very well suited to make SAR missions faster and more effective. Especially the transfer of exact position coordinates of the distressed person within the emergency call message is of paramount importance for the rescue teams. In addition, the functionality that the position of the casualty is not only shown on the SAR Mission Control software but also appears on the displays of the SAR TourGuides used by the SAR team members, increases also an effective rescue mission. Finally, the SAR Mission Control client with its collaboration functionality of coordinating, controlling and communicating to the SAR TourGuides turned out to be a very valuable and helpful tool for supporting emergency missions. However, we also realized that further efforts are necessary to improve service robustness and reliability. Especially the operation system features like connecting to the Internet were sometime tricky to use. CONCLUSION & PERSPECTIVES Within the PARAMOUNT project a running prototype LBS system for hikers was successfully established in two particular test areas of the German Alps and the Spanish Pyrenees. Following this prototype phase it is intended to build up a regular PARAMOUNT pilot service in a dedicated tourist area in the Alpine region. Regarding the SAFETOUR functionality a transfer to applications for other public areas, such as fire brigade, police etc., is also well considered. Further information on the project can also be found on the official project web page: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The PARAMOUNT consortium gratefully acknowledges the funding of the project by the European Commission (within the IST programme, CPA3). The project consortium includes 5 partners from Germany, Austria and Spain: IfEN GmbH is a privately owned company, which is strongly involved in satellite navigation system studies related to GNSS including GNSS research and development. In recent time, IfEN GmbH is also engaged in mobile applications and LBS. IfEN GmbH acts as the project coordinator. AGIS (Arbeitsgemeinschaft GIS) of the University of the Bundeswehr Munich is a study group focused on research and development activities in the fields of geoinformation systems. ICC (Institut Cartografic de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain) is an entity of public jurisdiction of the Generalitat de Catalunya and produces and distributes cartographic/geodetic data. Especially for the definition of the user requirements and the system test the following two organisations have been involved in the project: the Bavarian Mountain SAR Service (Bergwacht Bayern) and the Austrian Mountain SAR Service (OEBRD). REFERENCES [1] Heinrichs G., Löhnert E., Wittmann E., Eisfeller B., 2002: Enhancing mobile applications by combination of GNSS and W- CDMA. In: GPS Solutions, No.6, pp Springer-Verlag. Heidelberg/GER [2] Sayda, F.; Reinhardt, W.; Wittmann, E., 2002: GI and Location Based Services for Mountaineers. In: Geoinformatics, Vol.5, March Emmeloord/NED [3] Reinhardt, W; Sayda, F; Kandawasvika, A; Wang, F; Wittmann, E., 2002: Geoinformation and Location Based Services - Priciples and some Experiences with Applications for Mountaineers. In: GeoBIT/GIS Magazine, 6/2003. Herbert Wichmann Verlag. Heidelberg/GER [4] Loehnert, E., Wittmann, E., Pielmeier, J., Sayda F., 2002: PARAMOUNT. Proceedings

8 of the International Locellus Symposium, , Munich, Germany. DGON