A Novel, Community-Enabled Mobile Information System for Hikers

Hiking tourism is booming, innovative, and an important factor for the economic development of many countryside regions. Hikers have a strong need for information which they currently obtain through diverse, heterogeneous sources that are not ubiquitously accessible. They also have a strong community spirit which has not been addressed so far by intelligent systems. We worked on a novel mobile information system that allows ubiquitous access to the contained information, since hikers are seamlessly accompanied throughout all process stages before, during and after their actual trip. Furthermore, the system keeps them always up-to-date with relevant and geo-referenced information. For example, users are informed about a dangerous concentration of ozone in the atmosphere. The system also leverages the community spirit and enables communication and collaboration in case of an emergency, which significantly increase safety. We evaluated the system in a field trial in context of the German Hiking Summit which brought us valuable feedback and new ideas for further improvement.