D2.3: Models

 

Location

Description

The location refers to the geographical position of the person. This property can apply to the instant position of a person (typically the place in which a person is present at a particular moment and that can be given by e.g. Geo-location (GPS) coordinates, or even the geographical mapping of an IP number), or a more permanent position of this person (typically the living or working addresses of a person).

Examples of attributes

 

1. Address 

   1. Home 

   2. Work 

   3. Leisure 

2. Geographical location (instantaneous) 

   1. GPS coordinate 

   2. IP location mapping 

 

Application domains

The location of a person is used in a variety of application domains. For instance the instant coordinate of a person represents a major element in mobility applications. Indeed, this information can be exploited to offer services that are geographically close to the current position of a person. GPS can also be used to reveal some of the behavioural characteristics of a person (Mountain and Raper, 2000).

Security and personalisation, in particular in e-commerce applications, can also make use of the geographical location of the person determined via IP address (albeit with not a very good level of reliability, because the table of IP addresses is not updated in real-time, and a range of IP address may be reallocated to users from a totally different region). In the first case, this information can help to identify some instances of fraud, and as a consequence, a payment with a credit card issued in a different country may not be accepted. In the second case, the knowledge of the IP address can help to determine the nationality of the person, and therefore result in an interaction that is aware of geographical characteristics (such as the language used).

The permanent locations of a person (the addresses) represent an attribute that is present in many identity management applications since it represents one of the most important means to reach the person in the off-line world (via the mail). For instance, the address of the person will be used in an e-commerce application to deliver the physical goods that have been purchased by the person. 

Relevant standards

Addresses 

We will not try to identify all the different specifications that define the address of a person since these are numerous. However we can mention the services and specification for which this information can be considered more important such as LDAP (directory services) or vCard (the digital business card). In the domain of commerce, CIQ (OASIS Customer Information Quality) together with xNAL (extensible Name and Address Language) provide a relatively detailed way to represent a person’s address. 

 

Geo-location 

The applications and specifications that represent the geo-location of the person are rarer, and often relate to mobility. However, surprisingly this information does not seem to be present in the mobility standards that are used for mobile devices such as CC/PP (Composite Capabilities / Preferences Profile) proposed by W3C and UAProf (User Agent Profile) proposed by the WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) forum (See the Annexe for a description of CC/PP and UAProf). These latest standards are mainly used to manage user preference information that is typically used to customise the mobile device.

On the other hand, the Liberty Alliance developed a standard (ID-SIS-GL) that provides support for geo-location information representation (it defines a specialised schema to represent this information). This geo-location information includes the position of a principal, speed and direction related information, and information related to the quality of the position information. 

 

 

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