Patent ID: 8655740

Claim:
An information providing system for providing information about a facility or an event as facility-event information, the information providing system comprising: a management apparatus that includes a database, wherein the database stores facility-event information for a plurality of facilities or a plurality of events by associating the facility-event information for the facilities or the events with respective location data of the facilities or the events; and an in-vehicle apparatus that is mounted to a vehicle and communicable with the management apparatus, wherein: the in-vehicle apparatus acquires present position information indicating present position of the vehicle, transmits vehicle source information, which is based on the present position information, to the management apparatus, and provides a user, who drives the vehicle, with at least a piece of the facility-event information transmitted from the management apparatus; the management apparatus sets, based on the vehicle source information transmitted from the in-vehicle apparatus, a search scope parameterized by the location data, extracts the facility-event information matching the search scope from the database, and transmits the extracted facility-event information to the in-vehicle apparatus; the in-vehicle apparatus measures a parking time of the vehicle, sets a stay place of the user based on the present position information and the parking time of the vehicle, wherein the stay place is a place at which the parking time exceeds a threshold, sets a daily-visiting place of the user based on an acquisition date and time of the present position information, wherein the daily-visiting place is the stay place at which the vehicle is periodically parked, transmits place information indicating the stay place or the daily-visiting place to the management apparatus; based on respective location data corresponding to the place information transmitted from the in-vehicle apparatus, the management apparatus estimates that a living area of the user is a collective area covering all of the stay places of the user, estimates that a daily-living area of the user is a collective area covering all of the daily-visiting places of the user, estimates that a non-daily-living area is the living area of the user except the daily-living area; and the management apparatus acquires the present position information from the in-vehicle apparatus, and sets the search scope based on the present position information, by setting the daily-living area as the search scope when the present position of the vehicle is within the daily-living area of the user, and setting the non-daily-living area as the search scope when the present position of the vehicle is within the non-daily-living area of the user.