Ringing in the rain : an agent based weather warning system

Abstract

People's daily lives are impacted by lots of dynamic environmental information, such as weather and traffic. Though most of this information is available on the Internet, there is no easy way for someone to access it while in a mobile state. More importantly, people do not have a constant need for this kind of information unless there is a significant change that may impact their current or future activities. This thesis creates a distributed multi-agent architecture that uses GPS-enabled cell phones to build a mobile service development framework. The goal of this framework is to build mobile services to deliver timely changes in environmental information that could impact a user's current or future activities. A weather warning system for bicycle riders is built based on this framework to demonstrate its utility. This weather warning system tracks bicycle riders as well as current weather patterns; it warns riders about the risk of getting caught in the rain if it estimates that riders are heading into areas where rain is predicted, or if they are moving too far from shelter to be able to reach it before the rain starts. With this system, bike riders can make more informed decisions about which routes to take to avoid encounters with nasty weather conditions. The objective of this research is: 1) to examine the feasibility of using agent techniques and GPS-enabled cell phones to create the mobile service development framework, and 2) to investigate the new generation of location-based services in which the movement and status changes of multiple targets are considered.