A Location-based Service (LBS) is a generic term for a service that provides the location of a person or asset. Such services can be used in various use cases, ranging from emergency services that request your position to navigation applications that use your location to determine directions. 

From a software engineering point of view, both a pull and push-based LBS is distinguished. The pull-based LBS is used to indicate a service that only provides the current location when it is requested by a consumer (e.g. emergency service, key tracker) and a push-based LBS provides a location even when it is not requested (e.g. location-based advertising, self driving cars and implicit HCI).

Technologies

Providing a location can be done using various different technologies. A Global Position System (GPS) system is often used for outdoor positioning, but depending on the use case, other technologies such as LIDAR, computer vision or Wi-Fi positioning can be used. Hybrid system such as our OpenHPS framework can combine multiple technologies into one single location provider or service.