The telematics revolution is poised to increase the quality, efficiency and safety of our mobility as location-oriented content is combined with a range of powerful computing devices, wireless networks, positioning technologies and middleware. A tremendous amount of public and private innovation is taking place to leverage this content and technology in the form of compelling location-based software services (LBS). These services promise to finally deliver on the benefits envisioned by telematics and informed mobility. Dynamic digital maps and associated location-oriented content are central to this vision. It is the fuel that activates this network. It is pervasive throughout this emerging distributed telematics infrastructure in nearly every usage scenario, in myriad variations. To be useful in this context, digital maps and the dynamic location-oriented content associated with them need to be kept up to date. Traffic, weather, and event information quickly comes to mind as examples of real time dynamic content delivered electronically in quasi-real-time fashion. But digital maps and less dynamic content, such as points-of-interest or road construction schedules are also subject to significant change and/or improvement and are thus also time-sensitive. This paper will motivate the need for "real time relevance" in the digital map and associated content that is responsive to this time sensitivity, and provide a high level vision for an architecture that can put this relevance and value in the hands of end users.
Samenvatting