Establishing requirements of ubiquitous services for extreme multisport competitions

Abstract

This paper looks at a case of team-oriented endurance sports. Like most current human activities, it already comprises an existing pattern of co-ordination based on technology, namely the mobile phone. It is clearly a limited technology for the purpose of supporting swimming, biking and running, such as in our case of triathlon racing. Can we identify an alternative, dedicated and equally good technology for most athletes and race conditions? In an event that comprises events as diverse as swimming, cycling and running, will not the athlete then be faced with another challenge of juggling devices in addition to multifarious athletic skills? In ubiquitous services development, another big challenge is to furnish a system with multiple stakeholder benefits, i.e., which is helpful to the athletes as well as their support team, and the crew who organizes the event and the pertaining community at large. Our objective in this paper is to provide the background to make this possible, through describing the use situations in detail, from which new requirements may originate. Our paper, in this respect, is a starting point in the process of outlining one possible “killer app” for ubiquitous communication services.