Location-Based Information Sharing Platform Using Great-Circle Distance Calculations
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current location-based services on mobile devices are inefficient and user-unfriendly, often providing irrelevant information that consumes bandwidth, memory, and battery power, while lacking the ability to effectively share location-specific content.
Innovation Solution
A location-based information sharing platform that uses great-circle distance calculations to determine relevant information within a user's range, querying a content database to retrieve and present only location-specific data, such as news, events, and job openings, and allowing users to share information based on their current location.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If location-based information services provide information to users based on their current location, then users can obtain relevant location-specific information, but users receive unwanted information that consumes bandwidth, memory, and battery power
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the service area into multiple geographic zones with different information characteristics. Each zone is assigned specific information types and priorities based on its location properties. The mobile terminal determines which zone it is in and receives information tailored to that specific zone, rather than receiving all information from all zones. This localized approach ensures users get relevant information for their current area while filtering out unwanted information from other areas, reducing bandwidth and energy consumption.
2Productivity
If information services push information to mobile terminals based on assumed user locations, then information delivery can be automated, but a large percentage of the information is not useful to users
Solution Approach 1:
The system incorporates user feedback mechanisms where users can indicate which information types are useful or not useful to them. The server system stores these user preferences and uses them to filter and customize information push operations. When pushing information to mobile terminals, the server considers both the user's current zone and their expressed preferences, ensuring that automated information delivery is both efficient and useful to the user.
3Measurement precision
If the system calculates great-circle distances to determine user range, then location accuracy is improved, but computational complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The server system pre-calculates great-circle distances between all zones and stores these distance values in a lookup table. When a user's zone is determined, the system simply retrieves pre-computed distance information rather than performing real-time great-circle calculations. This approach maintains high location accuracy by using the mathematically precise great-circle formula, while significantly reducing the computational burden on mobile terminals during actual information delivery operations.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for creating a location-based information sharing platform are described. The method includes receiving location coordinates of a location of a user. The method includes computing great-circle distances between a plurality of points and the location coordinates using a mathematical formula. The plurality of points represents location coordinates of items of interests near the location of the user. The method includes determining a range information of the location of the user based at least on the computed great-circle distances. The range information includes a plurality of range coordinates. The method includes querying a content database based on the plurality of range coordinates to retrieve information lying within the plurality of range coordinates from available data in the content database. The method further includes facilitating access of the retrieved information to the user.