Geopackage data format for collaborative mapping of geospatial data in limited network environments

Abstract

With the growth of technology in earth and space science informatics has led to the revolution in a wide range of geospatial practice. Nowadays collaborative mapping has become a new hot spot, following mobile and web GIS. This paper explores the potential use of GeoPackage for collaborative mapping of geospatial data in limited network environments. GeoPackage is a data format that open-standard, platform-independent, portable, and self-describing. This paper focus on the implementation of GeoPackage in mobile application for field data collection. A mobile application was developed that implements the GeoPackage data format as an internal database to provide support for offline mapping. The developed mobile application demonstrates that vector and raster data can be stored in a single data format, which reduces the device storage consumption. The details of how GeoPackage data contribute to mobile GIS to achieve collaborative mapping in limited network environments are discussed. The findings show that the GeoPackage data format has great potential to improve existing mobile GIS applications.