The ODIN Consortium, in fact, is sure that the personalized and localized interaction with integrated regional services represents a milestones of the individual presence in the new Millennium of the Information Society. This integration will have a direct impact on all the traditional categories of the vertical systems, as they are structured today from the services providers; for example: a citizen for the Public Administration, a tourist for the reservation systems, a patient for the sanitary system etc. Therefore ODIN will be developed placing people and SME in the centre of the services and targeting particularly to integration of regional services able to satisfying their needs, rather than those of the services provider.

Background

In Europe, the mobile phones market is reaching its maturity and the increasing competitiveness is more and more pushing the providers to target to the mass market; at the same time, it's always fundamental to satisfy the needs of the professional customers, to whom they give continuously specific and high tech products. Innovative offers and new services for voice and data (Internet) are continuously introduced able to exploit the increasing market of the mobile devices (for ex. PDA).
In the same time, with the projects financed by the European Commission TITAN and E-MAIL has been verified successfully the development of Web services based on the concept of integration of data and information from different sources, and their representation on maps.
In the future, it's possible that the web information services (integrated, personalized and georeferenced) request increase to whom more and more customers can approach through mobile devices.
The force of ODIN consortium from the industrial point of view, is in the collaboration of a complementary group of medium companies, operating in the mobile phone sector and great companies operating in the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) sistems development. In the consortium there are moreover Regional Services providers (Public Administration, Local Authorities) with a strong interest to improve their services through the use of the concepts and the instruments proposed by ODIN.

Project Objectives

The ODIN project aim is the introduction of a new concept in the planning of upgradable and distributed internet applications, able to accelerate the integration of a new class of interactive and personalized services able to provide information with cartographic representation relative to the place and the moment in which they are required. ODIN want satisfy the new market needs, developing:

• Administrative services distributed for local governments
• (m)e-commerce services able to resolving the existing limitations for the rural areas
• Environment protection services and territory management
• Services of personalized tourist information
• Services for a better accessibility to tourist localities
• Services for a better using of the natural and cultural patrimony

Technical Approach

The project architecture will be developed in according to ISO/ODP standards, for the planning it will be used the UML, with reference to the Rational Unified Process and the OMT. For the implementation will be used mainly XML and the correlated brand new platforms like Microsoft .NET. The basic idea is to realize a platform able to permit the access to different kind of users, considering the last technological trends: mobile terminal with graphical and calculation performances (PDA), mobile communication devices (GPRS, and in future UMTS) etc. This platform, TCP/IP protocol based, will use XML like middleware and GIS features offered by Autodesk GIS server. The user position will be provided by the localization services developed by mobile phone operators; otherwise, could be used a GPS or the same user will supply his position.

Expected results

ODIN will allows to citizens, tourists, PMI in rural areas, a simple wireless access just-in-time to many kind of information where and to when they are necessary. Administrative, working, environmental, meteorologic, logistic, cultural, entertainment information, and services of (mobile) electronic commerce, reservation and payment. That will allows to improve the quality of the life and to increase the business in the experimentation areas of the project.
The project will bring moreover the realization of:

• A software able to allow the access to geo referenced and not datasources, allowing the dynamic visualization on PDA devices
• A personalized services package based on the maps for the information representation
• A methodology for the development to regional level of the interactive services above described
• A services package able to supporting itself independently