Promotion of the tourist and cultural product

PROJECT TITLE:
Promotion of the tourist and cultural product through the symbolic representation of some of its components on a global map (VR360) video: the case of events

OBJECTIVES OF RESEARCH PROJECT

The investigation of the promotion of the tourist and cultural stock related to the events through the implementation of its recording, organization, preservation and cartographic presentation services, is the object of the proposed project. The following is a brief overview of Research, Creation and Innovation goals.

a) Research:

1. Exploring the relationship between recorded events and the history of a place through innovative digital fact-finding and presentation services.
2. Evaluating the upgrade of the tourist and cultural product through a new way of presenting events in their online mapping service enriched with material that creates the feeling of 3D browsing and promotes the sensory and cognitive experience
3. Comparing the efficiency of organizing information about events in terms of a typical ontology – taxonomy, with that based on collective labels – folksonomy.
4. The definition, production process and evaluation of the automatic creation of “coordinate line” subtitles with information from stored cartographic data.

b) Creation – Innovation

• The design and implementation (in two different versions) of a service for recording and organizing cultural events in a suitable repository and its continuous use and evaluation. The initial version should be available after the 10th month from the start of the project.
• The integration of a standard metadata model during the implementation of the above. Initially it is recommended to use the Simple Event Model, which may be increased or replaced after the first tests.
• The implementation of functionality for collective creation of labels and its use in the process of organizing events.
• The design and implementation of a service in which the events will be mapped over time, in various locations in the region of Crete. The service will be used extensively by different groups of users and will be evaluated in terms of functionality and awareness offered by the organization and its content. The initial version of the service will be available at the end of the 1st year from the beginning of the implementation of the proposal.
• The design of the process of organizing the production of global (VR360) videos and the study of the necessary administrative and legal commitments and agreements to secure the licenses where required.
• The study and design of the scenarios of use of the services until the completion of the respective services / systems, when questionnaires of evaluation of functionality, usability, innovation and aesthetics will have been prepared in combination with the experience offered.
• The design and implementation of the process of evaluating the content of the event recording and organization system, and its repetitive application, in order to select the locations and events for which global videos will be created.
• The subtitling of the global videos with Greek and English subtitles.
• The design and implementation of how subtitles appear.
• Explore the possibility of automatically coordinating “coordinate line subtitles” of global videos, with information from the Google Maps service (mainly toponyms and POIs), by correlating spatial information in video scenes with the corresponding map service Google (use of geocode and google places API web services). 

RESULTS OF RESEARCH PROJECT

A) About research questions

• Report and publication on the relationship of the recorded events with the history of a place and the upgrade of the tourist and cultural product with their cartographic representation in a suitably designed service enriched with material that evokes the feeling of three-dimensional tour.
• Publication related to the selection or creation of the most appropriate metadata format for the organization, identification and cartographic representation of events, specially designed to meet the needs of describing events that are “hosted” in repositories or CMSs.
• Publish to the “coordinate bar” subtitle and automatically create subtitles for video sites using data from the Google Maps service via interfaces with the geocode and google places APIs.
• Various reports related to: the organization of the production of global video sites and the settings and optimal parameters for their reception, the way subtitles are displayed and the writing of subtitling stories on global videos, the process of gathering information about events from news portals and its transition fact-finding system. 

 B) About the systems / services that are created, the innovations that are implemented and the digital inventory that is produced

• A system for easy storage, organization and storage of event-related information, which will be offered as a web service, will meet accessibility requirements and will be adapted for use by mobile devices. The information stream will follow a selected metadata format for the events, and registered users will be able to submit ratings, comments and tags. The way the information is organized will allow the future development of inventory-based value-added services, and the information encoding options (according to the UTF-8 standard) will allow inventory to be uploaded to / from other systems.
• Procedure for extracting collective / social labels (folksonomy) from the label stock of the above system that will be evaluated as an alternative set of terms for the description and organization of information about events giving the possibility of transcribing the same stock.
• Web service for the cartographic display of events that take place in locations in the region of Crete, which will ensure accessibility and use by mobile devices. The events will be displayed filtered in terms of their time period with appropriately selected icons for the type and access characteristics in order to satisfy the potential participant, or in other aspects, eg filtered by type in order to satisfy the potential creator of relevant events or the businessman – investor of the space. The service will integrate global (VR360) videos of selected sites to indirectly but effectively promote the cultural and tourism product of the sites being viewed.
• Digital stock of 200 global video sites of Crete in which events take place, subtitled in Greek and English.