D11.6: Survey on Mobile Identity

The legal framework for LBS in Europe INSTITUTE FOR BROADBAND TECHNOLOGY (IBBT) IN FLANDERS

The interdisciplinary Institute for BroadBand Technology (IBBT) is a research institute founded by the Flemish Government, focusing on information and communication technology in general and applications of broadband technology in particular. IBBT consists of initially 14 participating research groups focusing not only on the technical but also on the legal and social aspects of information and communication technologies. IBBT is promoting research with more than 30 ongoing projects mainly focusing on eGovernment, eHealth, new media, mobility and enabling technologies.

Below we will briefly present some of the projects where location data are in the centre of research for several applications.  

Crisis management is often needed for mastering disasters, e.g. a major fire in industrial or chemical environments. The major challenge in such a crisis is to provide the authorities with concise and exact information in real-time through a crisis management system. Such a system should process dynamic data collected through a mobile network, and present the derived information together with information that has a static nature, in combination with geographical information. That is the system that will be studied, implemented and demonstrated in the GeoBIPS (Geographical Broadband Integration for Public Services) project. Hence, the overall goal of this project is to specify, design and build a demonstrator of a system that collects, processes, displays and distributes static and dynamic information on top of a geographical information system (GIS), using wireless broadband technology with an application to a crisis intervention system that provides a real-time overview of the disaster area for a fire department..

The end-goal of the project SPAMM (Solutions Platform for Advanced Mobile Mesh) is to specify, to research and to design a demonstrator of a mobile platform (targeted towards cars, buses, trucks etc.) which, through different networks, always keeps the best possible connection between both the vehicle and its backend infrastructure and between vehicles themselves (ad-hoc or mesh networking). The innovation inside the networking part of the project can be found in the dynamic switching between different networking modes. If a vehicle is connected through a public hotspot and moves out of range of this hotspot, there has to be a way to switch to ad-hoc networking to connect to the back-end infrastructure through other hops. If there are no other peers available to form a connection to the back-end, the platform must connect to the best available narrowband network (GPRS or UMTS). The convergence between the different networks needs to happen in a transparent manner for the user, without requiring any form of action on his/her part. The dynamic switching between the network modes also needs to happen with as little data loss and delay as possible.

The aim of Architectures for Mobile Community Content Creation (A4MC3) is to explore the possibilities of community building using advanced technology - mobile terminals, wireless networks, multimedia and metadata technology - to create a virtual online community for the residents of a Belgian city. A multi functional mobile device (e.g. PDA) which is connected to a metropolitan wireless network and is distributed to the residents, acts simultaneously as a publishing tool (through which the residents can ‘feed’ user created content to an online database) and a receiver of location based information. In the said case, different user groups are targeted: the average end-user (someone in the street who uses his digital camera to capture content and upload it to the online database, or comments on the food quality of a specific restaurant), the advertiser (who is trying to reach the consumer in a targeted way, by offering location based information), the professional journalist (who is reporting from a specific location) and the moderator of the virtual community (as the intermediary engaged in the provision of the online service).

Wireless technology is a key driver in adding value in building automation through the deployment of technology. Indeed, installing and commissioning a myriad of wired networks has been reported to be a major source of effort and thus of cost. The multitude of wired networks in a typical professional building consists of the computer network, the fire alarm network, the emergency lighting network, the access control network, etc. Recently the different networks are being deployed using a building automation bus system such as EIB, LON and BACNET. Where the interoperability issues for these wired networks are gradually being solved, fundamental technological problems remain when deploying these services over wireless networks. The WBA (Wireless Building Automation) project hopes to redefine the state of the art in wireless building automation, facing challenges like how it would be possible to implement new functionality such as indoor positioning, by reusing the wireless technology infrastructure used for the wireless networks deployed for other tasks.

The Goal of ADAMO (Advanced Disaster Architecture with Mobility Optimizations) project is to specify, research and develop a demonstrator for disaster control architecture where persons on the disaster site and persons in the crisis centre are provided with a real-time view on the complete scope of a disaster. ADAMO will provide every link in the information chain through constant and specific updates of the existing information.

The project FLEXSYS (Flexibel verkeersbeheersysteem: flexible traffic management system) aims at the dynamic adaptation of traffic management systems to the ever-changing road circumstances, like road works, traffic diversions, emergency clearances etc. For that purpose the project researchers must conduct important innovative interventions in the different links of a traffic management value chain: detection, network and communication, data processing and signalisation.