LOCATION BASED SERVICES
OVERVIEW
The airport services that can be offered using the location utilities are managed by a Generic Proximity Notifier environment. The proximity notifier has been implemented as a truly generic environment in which it is possible to configure any type of notification by associating it with one or more fences of the airport.
The proximity notifier on the back office allows the configuration of fences and notifications of the airport. The airport fences can be associated with a lat / lon position and a circle around the central point or can be associated with the ibeacon ID.
Messages can be freely configured and associated with fences. The most interesting attributes of the messages are: message text, type of message (commercial, customer support, security, …), metadata (name, surname), validity period, presentation of the palimpsest, fences, html pages to view the details.
The geo-fencing functions are managed on the physical device, so the App container is required to use them. The App contains a dedicated middleware that can enrich the geo-fencing functions, allowing the ibeacons id receiver to be treated in the same way as other localization facilities. In this way, regardless of the location technology used, the server side is always powered with “fences” events.
The Server can then process the “fence in” event, check the associated messages and generate notifications regarding an app store.
The notification text can include a URL to an html page containing the details. In this way, for example, you can freely prepare a promotion page for a store that uses all the power of the html language. Such promotions can also be associated with a flight for the immediate deployment and for a limited period of time.
It is possible to navigate between pages even without the use of the App container. With the configuration of the page URL on Eddystone’s Ideacon, the same page can be reached through the phisical web functionality of the mobile browser. In addition, PMA allows the integrated access to third-party services through a simple integration in the home page menu such as weather and news.
The prototype aims to test new digital services for the airport that could serve to create a new model of proactive communication with passengers using mobile devices.
The primary objectives that have been set are :
- creation of a multipurpose system to communicate with passengers using the mobile device notification channel
- ability to manage Proximity Marketing needs, but also ability to count on an instrument capable of disseminating information of various kinds linked to the location.
- use of soft models to avoid the excess of information that could create rejection phenomena
- ability to operate both on the forms of GPS localization and those based on beacon devices
- have extremely simple tools for configuring proximity messages
Considering the strategic importance of experimentation for the future creation of a true Digital Airport, a work was prepared that goes beyond the limits of experimentation and that constitutes a solid basis for the construction of innovative digital services to passengers.
The basic principles followed for the creation of the Proximity infrastructure were:
- creation of a middleware that allows to decouple the application logic from the localization technologies. In the case at issue, a Geofencing Plus module was created, which also conforms also the beacon localization events to the geofencing logics.
- creation of a system for the configuration of messages related to localization events with the ability to define: fence, validity intervals, message text, url for detailed web pages, safeguard window.
- selection of a beacon technology that allows the exploitation of the IOT (Internet Of Things) features of mobile devices to allow the transmission of useful information even if the passenger does not have the airport APP.
- capacity to configure the Fences to be managed, even if the related user interface has not been created in the prototype, consequently implementing downloading functions of the app of the Fence database.
- an https repository of information html pages to associate with messages in addition to the native ability to point to existing urls.
- operate in extension to the notification system already implemented for flight information of the airport app.
