The service was launched yesterday, as part of Bahrain's e-government programme, at a ceremony held at the Central Informatics Organisation (CIO), Isa Town.
It has been developed by the CIO, represented by the GIS (Geographical Information System) and the Addresses Directorate. Anyone having a mobile phone can now locate addresses or places like hospitals, restaurants or commercial banks, said CIO president Shaikh Ahmed bin Ateyatalla Al Khalifa.
The service will be provided free of charge to people who subscribe to GPRS (Global Position Retrieval System) offered by Batelco, he told a Press conference.
"Through this service, the customer will be provided in seconds with a map showing the location precisely."
The user can control the size and scale of the map by using the control tools provided with the map.
"This service provides detailed options like hotel locations and a search for various types of restaurants," said Shaikh Ahmed.
"It also provides the capability to search for a particular service like pharmacies within a given block."
CIO, as a government agency in charge of addresses and as a centre for geospatial Information in the kingdom, cares in the first place to provide services that give accurate and precise information for both private and public sectors, said Shaikh Ahmed.
"This system plays a big role in the support of tourism in the kingdom by providing comprehensive and accurate information on hotels, restaurants and recreation areas to the tourists," he added.
"It also helps in speeding up delivery of mails and other services by easily locating addresses. It took about two years of continuous enhancement work for the geospatial information database, which will play a major role in many projects and applications in the near future, said Shaikh Ahmed.
Displaying geospatial maps on a mobile phone is different from a computer, said CIO general director of statistics and population registry Najma Mohammed Janahi.
This requires a small map that fits into a mobile phone capacity and covers the whole kingdom, she added.
The user can search for an address by entering the block, road and building numbers, said CIO director of addresses and GIS Directorate Khalid Al Haidan. He or she will then get a map showing the addresses, location, area name, block number and surrounding landmarks.
The user can also select a landmark or a service provider from a drop down list, which includes clubs, restaurants, hospitals, embassies, money exchange, banks, pharmacies, tourist attractions and police, fire and filling stations.
The service is not limited to the above but expands to subcategories with more details.
For example, when selecting the hotels service, the user can further select the hotel class, when a list of the five star hotels are displayed.
As part of the project, 150,000 new signs have been installed around Bahrain over the past two years, said Shaikh Ahmed. These include 110,000 household signs and 27,000 road signs and 80 massive billboards.
"People using the service will get an updated address list electronically, and it is always superior to the manual system where a change in address may not be shown," said Shaikh Ahmed.
Autor: Soman Baby
Quelle: Gulf Daily News, 07.07.2005
