ArchaeoApp Rome Edition (AARE): Making Invisible Sites Visible - e-Business Aspects of Historic Knowledge Discovery via Mobile Devices

Abstract

Rome is visited by 7 to 10 million tourists per year, many of them interested in historical sites. Most sites that are described in tourist guides (printed or online) are archaeological sites; we can call them visible archaeological sites. Unfortunately, even visible archaeological sites in Rome are barely marked – and invisible sites are completely ignored. In this paper, we present the ArchaeoApp Rome Edition (AARE). The novelty is not just to mark the important, visible, barely known sites, but to mark the invisible sites, consequently introducing a completely novel type of site to the tourist guidance: historical invisible sites. One challenge is to get to reliable, historic information on demand. A possible approach is to retrieve the information from Wikipedia directly. The second challenge is that most of the end users have no Webaccess due to the high roaming costs. The third challenge is to address a balance between the best platform available and the most used platform. For e-Business purposes, it is of course necessary to support the highest possible amount of various mobile platforms (Android, iOS and Windows Phone). The advantages of AARE include: no roaming costs, data update on demand (when connected to Wi-Fi, e.g. at a hotel, at a public hotspot, etc. ... for free), automatic nearby notification of invisible sites (markers) with a VisualAuditory-Tactile technique to make invisible sites visible.