5.5 Personalized Adaptive Maps Maps are of great value, when a tourist is moving in an unfamiliar area and searching for some kind of business or sight. Maps have the potential to represent large amounts of information about the area of interest as a single, relatively small picture. The art to design maps in a way that such condensed information is not confusing but easy to understand has a long tradition. Automatic design of maps is a challenge for AI and smart systems; it is a complex task that also involves cognitive and psychological aspects. Map adaptations can take into account a wide range of factors, such as technical conditions (e.g. size of display screen, colour depth, raster versus vector graphics), the cognitive abilities of the recipient, and its purpose of use (e.g. topographic map, navigation map, thematic map, and historic map). Some prominent examples of map style are the culture-specific use of colours and symbols. There are different official signatures for map features in different countries. It is possible to specify different particular map styles for different countries. The Web Map Server developed in CRUMPET will also support different styles, but is being enhanced by allowing modifications to a wide range of graphical properties. Examples of adapting a map presentation to context and personal profiles are: • Calculate the boundary of the requested map in order to include the current position of the user. • Adjust the boundary of the requested map in order to include objects of high interest. • Represent objects of higher interest more dominantly by suitable symbols. Intelligent automatic production of location aware, personalised tours and maps is still a challenging research area. It also needs more insight in usability needs, as will be gained by validating the prototypes developed in CRUMPET.