Development of a Mobile GIS Property Mapping Application using Mobile Cloud Computing

Abstract

This study presents the development of a mobile GIS Property mapping application for use by local authorities in developing countries. Attempts to develop property mapping applications especially in developing countries have mostly used GIS desktop productivity software tools that required the digitization of property maps by highly skilled GIS experts. In addition, these applications lacked real time capture of attribute, spatial and image data of properties. A survey was conducted in the Kafue local authority to gather systems requirements for the mobile application. After design and modeling, the developed application was trialed in the field and 10 properties were mapped successfully. The software tools used in this study included Android Studio, Leaflet mapping library, Apache2 web server, PostgresSQL with PostGIS Extensions and OpenstreetMaps and MapBox mobile cloud computing mapping services. The hardware tools used included a laptop computer and a mobile phone running android operating system. The study showed that mobile property mapping applications can be developed by tapping into the computing resources provided by mobile cloud computing. The benefits of this model include real time complete property data capture and the use of non GIS experts in mapping projects.