The scope of LBS for the social sciences

1. The scope of LBS for the social sciences Jonathan Raper

2. Location based services • Information services to mobile device users adaptive to their current (or recent) location • Depends on locational knowledge from • user, or • mobile device • Requires georeferenced service information for a • point e.g restaurant • line e.g. path • area e.g. service zone

3. Growth of mobile phone use

4. PC vs Mobile phone use

5. Mobile geolocation Area: • Cell global identity (CGI) • Timing advance (TA) Point: • Observed time difference (OTD) • Enhanced GPS • 2G uses CGI mast position/GPS point via SMS • 3G uses OTD positions over packet network

6. Mobile cell infrastructure

7. E-OTD testing Percentage within 50m = 75% within 100m = 100%

8. Phone-computer convergence

9. Mobile geolocation devices • GPS phones • Benefon Esc • PDA extensions • Rand McNally

10. Location on demand • Current situation • CGI location is available • BUT at low geographic resolution >100m>10km • Near future situation • E-OTD location >5>70m calculated by the device • Location available to device/network • What are the various social implications of this? • Commodification of location • Locational privacy • Locational profiling • Social use

11. 1 Commodification of location • Traffic data used for call billing in ‘local’ calling plans • Location could be passed on by carrier in return for: • Information service by subscription • Monitoring by arrangement • Locational alerts and triggers

12. Location intermediaries • Mobile Location provider • LBS Middleware providers • MAGIC consortium • Gravitate platform and others • Standardisation initiatives • Open Location Services from Open GIS • Location Interoperability Forum among mobile carriers • Multimedia service providers • e.g. Hypergeo mobile tourist information service • GI providers

13. Location information regulation USA: • Wireless Communication and Public Safety Act 1999 • permits operators of cellular networks to release the geographic locations of subscribers in emergency situations • E-911 initiative

14. Location information regulation UK • Telecommunications (Data Protection and Privacy) Regulations 1999 • Limitations on the processing of traffic and billing data by carriers(Nb no clear reference to location) • Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2001 • Can require recovery of location known from mobile phones (when this is part of traffic data) for intelligence purposes

15. Regulation • Is there adequate regulatory protection for the use of location in traffic data? • Who has access to the location? • How long should it be kept for? • What geographic resolution is available? • What contractual provisions exist for location? • Is there a model contract? • Where can location information be transferred for processing? • Do users have control over their location information?

16. 2 Privacy • What is privacy? • Relates to individuals • Guards against intrusion, appropriation, breach of confidence ECHR ARTICLE 8: RIGHT TO RESPECT FOR PRIVATE AND FAMILY LIFE • 1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence •  2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except ... in accordance with the law and (as) is necessary in a democratic society

17. Information privacy • What is privacy in information? • Fair processing (e.g. UK Data Protection Act 1998) • Private communication (e.g. UK Human Rights Act 1998) • Authentication • Anonymity • Responsibilities • Social participation • Register for elections- note court case under UK RoPA Act 2000 • Respect for netiquette • Avoidance of impersonation

18. Dataveillance ‘They are always watching you. Use cash. Do not give your phone number, social security number or address. Do not fill in questionnaires. Demand that credit firms remove you from marketing lists. Check your medical records often. Keep your telephone number unlisted. Never leave your mobile phone on. Do not use credit or discount cards. If you must use the Internet, use someone else’s computer. Assume that all calls, voice mail, email and computer use are monitored.’ Economist 1 May 1999

19. Locational privacy • Protection of information about your current or home location in space or cyberspace • Currently no explicit regulation of locational privacy • Essay in January 2001 GeoEurope (http://www.geoplace.com/) • Private persona- should be absolutely protected • Public persona- tradeable by consent, disconnected from the private persona

20. 3 Locational profiling • LBS require spatial and temporal context to function effectively, except for superficial queries • LBS need to know • how accurate is the location information produced • the movement style of the subscriber • the geographical relevance of information to the user • This information will allow spatial/temporal personalisation of the mobile information services • This implies tracking- can LBS be done without it? • Becoming a key issue with 3G location resolution

21. Tracking • What kind of tracking is acceptable? • User-controlled and deletable tracking • Where the absence of tracking is non-disclosable • When might tracking be useful? • Safety-oriented e.g. in the mountains, at sea • Security-oriented e.g. for children’s activities • Tracking and LBS are coupled • Tracking and the public persona • Hypergeo project collected long datasets to explore this • Nb our subjects are mostly men, though mobile users are evenly divided between male and female in Europe

22. Tracking • Jonathan’s Wedding anniversary weekend in Venice • Large red dots = 10 minute positions • Small orange dots = ‘resolution’ positions that are spatially and/or temporally significant

23. Tracking • Jason’s nine day Honeymoon in the Scilly Isles • Nine day track composite • Highlight-oriented visualization shows aggregate behaviour

24. Geraldine’s day out • Geraldine goes to see family and then out shopping • What your spouse does…

25. Tracking • Dave’s London week as a surface

26. A week in Jonathan’s life Light = early, dark = late Colour= day

27. Jonathan’s week with a map

28. Locational profiling analysis • Hypergeo Location Trends Extractor • Define spatio-temporal episodes by jumps • Build locational summaries (envelopes) • Guess current activity (movement styles) • Speed • Sinuosity • Envelopes and style used to choose map scale and extent delivered to Hypergeo client device • These metrics define the locational profile for the mobile service personalisation

29. Location trends extractor • Linked space/time view for exploration

30. Location trends extractor • Envelope evolution in London trial • Crossing London by car, sampling position every minute and calculating envelopes

31. Hypergeo trial November 2001 • Hypergeo 1999-2001 EU IST funded project • Full service trial with Position Tracker rig (Nokia 9110 & Garmin III GPS) with iPaq phone mobile client • Karsruhe, Germany • Server at Matra in Toulouse, France • Bandwidth: 5K HTML, 20K map as image • Webpark 2001-4 EU IST funded project on LBS in mountain/marine environments

32. Information push/ pull requests • Mobile information service requires • locational profile • place-based search • Information service footprints • Area of validity (Angerman) • Hard primitives (polygon etc.) • Soft primitives (probability density functions) • Contexts (Davies) • Hypergeo implements hierarchical contexts

33. Locational profiling & privacy • Locational profile defines geographic relevance for information requests- what are the components? • Movement- direction, minimum effort direction • Constraint- path options, accessibility, perspective • Association- contiguity, place • Setting- what has influence over, focus • Locational privacy is concerned with what you are interested in as well as where you go… • Geographic relevance defines locational privacy?

34. 4 Social use of location • Mobile device use among under 30s is very high in Europe due to pre-pay tariffs • Virtual communities created through mobile device • New concepts of (mobile) place • Flocking behaviour using SMS messaging • Peer to peer modelling of geographic relevance • Potential to restructure society through space-time compression e.g. traffic jams may self-disperse

35. Access to mobile information • Delivery channels may be differentiated by service cost and billing status leading to exclusion • Device type characteristics could limit access • Education for mobile information services? • Information may not be free for those not willing to share their public persona

36. EU IST projects • FLIRT • FETISH • CRUMPET • HARMONISE • DEEPMAP • Hypergeo • Webpark http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~dmm/

37. GI research agenda • Spatio-temporal databases • Analysis of spatio-temporal datasets • Geographic visualization and HCI • Real-time and mobile GIS architectures • Geolibrary architectures • Representation and place • Geographical relevance

38. Social science research agenda • Commodification of location- how regulated? • Locational privacy- public vs private persona? • Locational profiling- a Faustian bargain that’s OK? • Social use- can LBS have an emancipatory effect? • Who controls this LBS technology?