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A local company, SuperGeo, has developed a GPS-based tourist guide for Taiwan's Yeh Liu park, which is situated on a cape on the island's north coast, between Taipei and Keelung.

The cape is 1700 metres long and is formed by the Datun Mountain. The park is famous for the curious shapes carved by sea erosion. The most well-known of these is the ‘Queen's Head’. Others include the ‘Fairy Shoe’, the ‘Bee Hive’, ‘Ginger Rocks’ and ‘Sea Candles’.

The park’s tourist centre offers multimedia briefings, guides and folders to visitors who wish to learn about the park’s unique natural features. However, with 50,000 visitors each month, the park is only able to provide these resources to about 27 per cent of visitors. To address this shortfall, park managers have implemented an electronic guide system to provide the information in a new format and improve visitors’ experiences.

SuperGeo developed the product using SuperGIS Mobile Engine, a software development kit released in 2008. First, developers converted the information on the park’s visitor resources into electronic form. The information was then linked to GPS so the system would only display data that was relevant to the user’s current location.

The data was then organised into layers. Information on scenic spots is recorded in a point layer where each point represents one scenic spot. A second layer contains an itinerary and the third contains information on danger zones. The itinerary and danger zones are recorded as line features. If the distance (determined via GPS) from the current co-ordinate to any line feature exceeds a preset value, a warning sounds. This stops visitors straying into danger or getting lost in the park.

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