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WalkOnWeb
Your digital guide for walking in Europe
WalkOnWeb worked on defining defining a new publishing model for walking and tourist information. This model has been elaborated by developing the necessary applications for content creation and publication, and by defining a supporting business model.
Impact
The project's main goals have been:
- To link hiking trail descriptions to relevant other information originating from diverse sources (geographic data, tourist information, path descriptions)
- To create a user-friendly system that allows ramblers to access all relevant information about rambling paths, including cross-border paths
- To create a content-creation system for the collaborative creation, maintenance and integration of rambling and tourist information
- To create a business model for online publication and consultation of rambling and tourist information
WalkOnWeb's main innovation
The innovative aspects of the WalkOnWeb technology have been focused on two areas:
- using geo-ontologies to build and exploit semantically rich data structures;
- using open standards to build highly usable map interfaces on small GPS-enabled devices while protecting the intellectual property of map providers.
A geo-ontology is a formal specification of concepts and the relations among them in the geographical domain. WalkOnWeb has developed a geo-ontology for the domain of rambling, containing the knowledge for capturing information about walking paths. This way information is semantically enriched in such a way that information authoring becomes easier, searching more adequate and publication can be done in a language-independent way.
For enabling rich map interfaces on mobile devices SVG is used. This XML standard allows vector-based graphics, so that usability and user interaction on a mobile device is optimal. Further the use of open standards ensures maximum portability and interoperability.
More details
- Project Introduction (PDF, 50KB)
- Animated flash movie containing a preview on what the project is developing.
- Annual Report 2006 (PDF, 440KB)
- Annual Report 2005 (PDF, 89KB)
- Become a member of the Project Interest Group to actively participate in the project discussions and to have a view on non-public documents. You can become a member of the WalkOnWeb Project Interest Group by sending an e-mail
- On the WalkOnWeb website you can subscribe to the newsletters and also find the previous newsletters, including the one on the project's work on the integration of cartographic maps (PDF, 1.148KB).
- WalkOnWeb project website
Administrative details
erWalkOnWeb was a Specific Targeted Research Project of the European Union's 6th Framework Programme. It was submitted to the second call of the programme and addresses the strategic objective 'Cross-media content for leisure and entertainment'.
WalkOnWeb started on 1 October 2004 and finished on 30 March 2007 (30 months). The overall budget has been of roughly 3.2 million euro.
List of participants
A multidisciplinary group of specialists from four European countries are working together on this project:
- User groups and publishers:
- FFRandonnée - Fédération Française de la Randonnée Pédestre (France)
- Uitgeverij Lannoo (Belgium)
- Vakantiegenoegens (Belgium)
- Researchers:
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
- Software developers:
- Luciad NV (Belgium)
- APIF Moviquity SA (Spain)
- Usability engineers:
- CURE - Center for Usability Research and Engineering (Austria)
- Geography institute:
- IGN - Institut Géographique National (France)
Contact persons
- Project coordinator
- Bert Paepen
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
- Technical director
- Karel Maesen
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Events in connection with WalkOnWeb
- WalkOnWeb closing seminar: "GPS 2.0 - From gadget to rich content" in Leuven, Belgium on 13 June 2007.This free seminar was organised by WalkOnWeb and focused on the project's main results and related this to other developments in the domain of rich content for outdoor navigation. Seminar folder (PDF, 173KB)
- Presentations at different occasions, including the German Walking Day in Prüm (PDF, 901KB), Germany on 14 July 2006, CityInMyPocket seminar about mobile city guides in Mechelen, Belgium on 26 September 2006 and EPOCH LBS seminar in Brussels on 21 November 2006.
- Presentation of the paper "Using a Walk Ontology for Capturing Language Independent Navigation Instructions" at the ELPUB 2006 conference in Bansko, Bulgaria on 14-16 June 2006. Presentation (PDF, 988KB)
- Conference "Walking in the 21st century: free seminar focusing on new developments, innovations and trends in the world of hiking and outdoor navigation" organised by WalkOnWeb on 3 May 2006, Heverlee, Belgium. Programme brochure (PDF, 581KB)
- Presentation at annual ERA conference, 23 September 2005, Elspeet, Netherlands, and at the ERA conference in Budapest, Hungary on 29 September 2006. These events bring together a large number of European hiking associations.
Presentation 2005 (PDF, 195KB) and Presentation 2006 (PDF, 898KB) - Presentation at FFRandonée GIS seminar, 1 April 2005, Paris, France.