Introduction

Amsterdam has a technological history of 476 years of (digital) mapping, navigation, semantic web and related technologies. In addition it has a rich cultural heritage. The opportunity that arises now is to combine Art & Technology for city marketing.

City backbone

AMS 3.0 aims to create a backbone that brings together Content Suppliers, Government Information and other data. This together will form a “ Content Vault” with Rich Data. On top of these data, User Centric applications can be developed. AMS 3.0 will have participants from public and private sectors and include Municipality of Amsterdam participation.

Mobile travel applications

The world of Navigation Technologies and Location Based Services using mobile phones is innovating rapidly. From turn-by-turn instructions how to get from A to B, travelers now ask what can I do when I get there. With the current state of unstructured information it is very hard for the visitor to find relevant information quickly and make personalized informed decisions on the go.

The base layer of the geographical map is the foundation on which more layers are “mashed up”, resulting in data appearing in a user-friendly context. The availability of a vast data supply of cultural heritage, Points of Interest (POI) open up complete new ways for City Exploration and planning City visits, before during and after a trip.

Combining initiatives

Currently there are many ICT initiatives in different parts of Europe, related to capturing digital heritage. The main project is Europeana. http://www.europeana.eu/portal/. In addition there are other projects, that relate to culture, such as Isaac (Integrated e-services for Advanced Access to Heritage in Cultural Tourist Destinations) http://www.isaac-project.eu/about.asp and CHIP (Cultural Heritage Information Presentation. http://www.chip-project.org/

These projects aim to make this information more easily available on the net for various purposes including research but are not ready for helping visitors with POI and cultural information on the go.

Proposal & Coming years

The proposal calls to unify initiatives to build a city backbone and city marketing applications. WCIT 2012 Canada can be used as a live showcase of the city marketing applications. The successful result, based on combining the backbone and applications can innovate the world of Travel and provide new impulses. These “New Combinations” will provide economic stimulus and growth in tourism.

Learn more at: ejlenberg [AT} me [DOT} com