Mobile Geographic Information Systems: A Case Study on Mansoura University, Egypt

Abstract

With the rapid development of GIS, embedded technology and wireless communicationtechnology, mobile GIS becomes an active research area in the field of GIS. Information collection is oneof the most promising application directions of mobile GIS. The purpose of this paper is to study thefield of geographical information systems to propose a contribution in solving one of the bottlenecks thatstumbles researchers from getting benefit of this field.This research used WAP technology to facilitate the communication and data transfer betweenthe end user and the GIS server. This enables the authors to solve the small storage area problem ofmobile devices. The basic idea of the suggested solution is based on saving the layers and the databaseon the GIS server and executing queries on the Server instead of using the mobile storage that's so smallcomparing with PCS, so we saved the storage area in mobiles. The small storage area of mobiles is agreat problem facing this research area.Two prototypes were built on Mansoura University as a case study. The first one is an executionof location-based systems (LBS) and the second one is an execution of field-based systems (FBS).Applying the first prototype has proved to achieve its aims in helping the University's management inmaking surveys on all the distributed computers in the university while they are in their offices withoutthe need to go to the site. Applying the second one has proved that the new comers found it’s useful inhelping them get the information they needed as well as telling them how to get there from here withoutany trouble.