How Can Semantic Be Introduced in GIS Mobile Applications: Expectations, Theory and Reality

With the advent of GPS and the spread of smart phones (iPhone, Android, etc.) have proliferated applications dealing with geographic information. Many of these applications are beginning to provide semantic information through: 1) the classification of tourist attractions in categories (thesauri tourism categories Open Street Map, etc.), and 2) the representation of metadata (Linked Geo Data, Crossing, etc.). However, mobile devices do not still uses all this potential. This paper presents a comprehensive study on the main formalisms to include Semantic and Geographic Data within a mobile device, and how to get them work efficiently just in the mobile, without internet connection. The article presents several options to implement these technologies and, for every option shows the limitations of such implementation. Therefore provides a glimpse into the various options available to implement semantic geographic applications on mobile devices. To mark the goal, the study shows a case study where ontologies have been used to provide semantics to a travel assistant that runs on mobile devices. The goal is an application able to offer personalized touristic routes different for every single user, that take into account, for example, the user interests and time available, and all the processes must be run within the mobile device. The main contribution of the paper is to manage and combine semantic data and geographic information within a mobile device, and doing it without internet connection, and for an end-user application.