Real-Time Information

Location based services for real-time information are focused on providing details of public transport services or road conditions in close proximity to the user's current location. A good example is the NetNav App provided by Centro in the UK West Midlands. This mobile application uses GPS to identify the user’s location and present the closest bus stops to thatlocation as well as real-time departures from those stops. The App also contains a location-based journey planner.

The Hands Free Traffic Talker England service uses data from the Highways Englanbd to power its app - which uses GPS to locate the user and present a hands’ free audio service providing location-based traffic information.

The key requirements for these applications are:

• the data must be trusted, reliable and accurate
• for a good understanding of the level of accuracy that can be achieved by GPS - and presentation of the data taking this into account
• a clear user interface design, to maximise the value of the location sensing technology
• the potentially to offset the real time information displayed, so that unrealistic journey options are not presented - for example, where walk-time to a stop would prevent a journey option from being viable, the system disallows that journey option from being shown