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1- What is the difference between Traveler Information, Loca

By: Dan Nual, Ph.D

One of the major objectives of Traftools which is written in the Vision Statements for the year 2004 stated the following.

ìTraftoolsprovides traveler information for drivers. The information is a set of driving directions that is responsive to traffic conditions in real-time (short-term prediction). We are planning to provide travel routes for other commuters besides drivers such as kiss-and-ride passengers using rail, and bus services as well. By the end of next year, we should be able to provide a shortest cost path from origin to destination considering all travel modes (bus, rail, taxi, etc.) available in the urban area.î

From the above statements, traveler information is purely ìthe informationî. Driving directions, locations of the vehicles, locations of selected services such as Gas Station, travel route for commuter are information. Each of this information alone can be ìtraveler informationî. You, the user will have to select which one is useful and important to you.

Location-based service basically tells where you are on a map. Two important aspects that you should understand about this service: the map is the heart and all other sets of information i.e. locations of gas stations, restaurants, shopping malls, etc are derived from the map. Therefore, location-based service is considered ìinformationî service and can be called ìtraveler informationî as well. All these sets of information are very useful.

In a number of articles that you might have seen before, the word location-based service is used to include driving direction, location of all services around you, etc. This is where I would like to emphasize. There is nothing wrong to include other information into location-based and call location-based service. The only difference is that these services can be separated and you should think and decide whether you really all services, i.e., many people think that driving direction alone is enough and therefore they decide to subscribe only the driving direction service, while others may decide to include their whereabouts information on the maps or location-based services as well.

One of the most important aspects of location-based services is the ability to track the location of the drivers or users, if needed. Commercial vehicles especially long haul trucks utilized location-based service many years ago. The company always knows its fleet whereabouts, travel speed; time arrived at the destination, etc.

Now, we are going to talk about means to deliver and devices to display the information. This is where Navigation devices come in. First we should understand background information and then reasons behind different devices.

Again, letís start with how Traftools derived and delivered its information

ìTraftools derive driving directions on our servers, because our process is very complex and require....[MORE]