OGC Web Map Service implementation challenges for mobile computers

One of the greatest challenges for computing today involves providing access to large volumes of distributed multimedia data. Mapping and personal navigation are among the most interesting applications involving this challenge, since they require access to static (such as street maps) and dynamic (such as traffic conditions) geospatial data. Such applications are currently the focus of much attention, considering that hardware is improving and wireless networks are becoming ubiquitous. Access to online maps is mainly done through proprietary and thematically limited geographic information services, such as Google Maps. A more interesting alternative for mobile applications is to use sources from spatial data infrastructures based on the Open Geospatial Consortium´s standardized Web services, such as the Web Map Service (WMS). WMS, however, imposes a high communication overhead and power consumption to the mobile device, and has a limited scalability potential. This paper presents a proposal for the development of an SDI environment in which some of these challenges can be adequately met, from both a geoinformatics and a mobile computing perspective.