Semantic Issues in Location-Based Services

Professor Stefano Spaccapietra

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland

May 1st, 12-1pm
FAB 10

ABSTRACT

Thanks to modern cellphones and palm computers equipped with GPS-like functionality, location-based services (LBS) have become very popular as a way to provide useful local information to people on the move, in particular tourists. Many LBS are available. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to semantic aspects, i.e. how to upgrade LBS from information portals into intelligent systems that could be of real help. Such upgrading typically includes personalization and contextualization of query processing. Unfortunately, user profiles and context information are currently mainly addressed in ad-hoc ways, hindering the emergence of a generic know-how if not a theory. This talk will discuss these semantic issues in LBS query processing, as well as underlying data modeling aspects dealing with time and space, an essential component of any LBS.

BIOGRAPHY

Stefano Spaccapietra is a full professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, where he is the director of the database laboratory. He received his PhD from the University of Paris VI, in 1978. He moved to the University of Burgundy, Dijon, in 1983 to occupy a professor position at the Institute of Technology and then joined EPFL in 1988. He has worked on developing R&D activities on visual user interfaces, which eventually resulted in the SUPER prototype and participation in two European projects (Helios and Swap). He has also lead research on semantic interoperability, including a joint research project (FEMUS) with the Polytechnic in Zurich (with Prof. Schek, ETHZ). Starting in 1995, a new research direction on spatio-temporal data modeling has become the major driving force of his activities. Together with Christine Parent, he has turned their earlier ERC+ model into MADS, a conceptual spatio-temporal data model. MADS has been used in the design phase for several applications. It has been recently extended to include multi-representation support, thanks to a new European IST project named MurMur.

HOST
Lois Delcambre