CINeSPACE Device to Help Unveil Cultural Heritage Based on Tourist's Interests

CINeSPACE is a one-of-a-kind project that combines GIS and semantic technology in order to offer an interactive way to unveil the cultural heritage of a specific location. The project is funded by the European Union.

CINeSPACE incorporates several technologies. For instance, it uses GPS to track the approximate position of the user. The device will be available for rent at different tourist offices and airports. It can be adjusted to a tourist's interests.

The developers are going to test their new technology in 2009. The starting points will be Glasgow, San Sebastian and Venice. CINeSPACE will provide videos of movies shot is these locations and will also offer visual archives about a certain spot.

CINeSPACE is a project managed by the Formento San Sebastian SA, Spain. Researchers started working on the project in 2006 and by 2009 CINeSPACE will be completed. The cost of the whole project is around 3.16 million euros. The share of EU is 1.87 million euros.

Mans Shapshak, the author of the Directions Magazine and one of the employees working for Trabajos Catastrales, SA, a subsidiary of the CINeSPACE consortium, characterized the innovative navigation system (created by Darmstadt-based Fraunhofer IGD group) by saying that it comprises four different technologies in order to reach maximum positioning accuracy. For identifying the position within about 10 meters GPS is applied. Afterwards, using markerless optical tracking, it is possible to identify the exact location.

Besides knowing your exact location, the system has to deliver a relevant multimedia, which is why Tracasa SA created the GeoConsepts Ontology, a semantic GIS technology.

"The GeoConcepts ontology provides a way to capture in a GIS system the spatial dimension of concepts, defining whether they are traditional geographic features (street, building or town) or vague concepts (events, daily activities, historical milestones or personalities) common to geospatial thinking," said Mr Shapshak.

Source: Information Society Technologies