3 Powerful New Ways to Apply GIS

Geographic Information Systems or GIS has entered a new and exciting phase in its evolution. In this blog post we discuss 3 powerful new ways to apply GIS technology.

Consumer Discovery GIS Apps

Gone are the days when GIS only served power geo-users. Today consumer apps are being built which use GIS. Maps are a perfect and intuitive way to discover information. An example might be providing moms a simple way to discover local parks for their kids. A GIS powered Parks Finder mapping app is the perfect answer.

Parks are presented as icons on an interactive map. More than that facilities are listed, park images, routing and distance from current location can be displayed. And the application works on all devices; at home on a PC, and when out and about from any mobile device. No more clicking through multiple web pages to get this information, its all nicely encapsulated in one easy to use application.

Citizen Engagement GIS Apps

Sharing information with customers and the general public, and more importantly gathering their feedback has long been a challenge. There has not been a good mechanism to share information, and centrally store this data. There have also been few tools to analyse this data. GIS now provides ways to overcome these obstacles. Using cloud technology, applications are now being built which provide a map-centric way to enable two way feedback with customers and citizens.

As an example, imagine you are a local government official who would like a simple to use citizen feedback application. You’d like to provide local people the ability to make service requests; maybe to remove graffiti, report water leaks, abandoned vehicles, debris on the road. You would also like this data stored centrally so it can be accessed and acted upon quickly and easily. Citizen engagement GIS apps are now being built which provide just this functionality.

Workforce Service GIS Apps

Looking for new ways to empower your employees? Look no further than GIS. With cloud and mobile technology we have moved into a new world of GIS apps to improve how we work. Both staff and executives can now use the power of GIS. For data snapshots executive dashboard are the perfect way to look across and run your organization. Field based staff no longer need reply on pen and paper for data collection.

Now leveraging mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads and Android devices, staff can fire up mobile GIS data collection apps to automate the process; both connected and disconnected.

These are exciting times for GIS. Now GIS development companies such as ours, can build apps for a wide audience. We still love our power GIS users, but now we provide Web and mobile GIS apps for use by non GIS folks too. Truly GIS for all.

Tags: citizen engagement, consumer, executive dashboard, GIS, GIS application development, mobile, Web

Categories: ArcGIS Online, Web and mobile GIS

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 10th, 2013 at 12:43 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.