Technological Developments within 3D Location-based Services

Location Based Services (LBS) are gaining much importance for all kind of human activities ranging from tourist navigation to support of rescue teams in disaster management. LBS have been developed as an independent from GIS stream for wireless services, but nowadays about 80% of all supplied data is spatially related, i.e. they are presented in a form of 2D map (raster of vector). LBS is becoming a special kind of GIS. In this paper we analyse the state-of-the-art of technology toward 3D LBS. We consider four important aspects of LBS namely standards, positioning, visualisation and geo-DBMS, which we believe will largely contribute to a breakthrough 3D LBS. These are addressed in detail. A final discussion elaborates on urgent topics for research.