As a mobile GIS development company we have had many fascinating conversations with clients, and built some very cool apps. We thought it might be interesting to look back at our experiences and list 4 popular uses of Mobile GIS.
Disaster Management and Assessment
Time is of the essence when managing disasters. Both providing relief to affected communities quickly, then following up with assessment and help with rebuilding. Mobile GIS has become a very important tool used by NGO’s and public safety departments.
We wrote last year about work we were doing with Monroe County. They were looking into improving their pen, paper and spreadsheet based approach to disaster assessment. Providing iPad’s to non-GIS trained Red Cross volunteers, loaded with a simple to use GIS app, was the goal of the work. The mobile GIS app built by WebMapSolutions allowed these volunteers to view interactive maps, collect data, share and collaborate while on site. The data resulting from the field reporting was quickly provided to state officials as an interactive Web map which was easy to understand, showed damage information at a parcel level, and helped with discerning patterns. This Web map approach has dramatically helped the decision making process, allowing for fast turnaround of relief funds.
Mobile applications require networking. Not any more: here we discuss 5 breakthrough offline use cases available now!
How often do you find yourself without mobile Wi-Fi connectivity? More often than you would like. Maybe you are in a remote area; working, possibly hiking, boating or fishing. Maybe you do not want to exhaust your mobile data plan. Its quite possible your mobile device has no outdoor Internet connectivity. Lower cost tablets only provide direct home or office based network connectivity and have no 3G/4G providing mobile data capabilities. Even if you have a tablet with networking service built-in from the telephone carriers, the service is inconsistent at best and sometimes it doesn’t exist.
This is a huge disappointment because tablets and smart devices have a great deal to offer businesses and consumers of all types, especially those that marshal resources to the field with the dreaded pen and paper. But until we can solve how we collect data of all types, integrate it into our workflow seamlessly, and do that in an occasionally connected world, we are going to remain in the stone age with pen and paper use by field staff.
The wait is over
Since we are mobile map and GIS experts, in this post we will describe 5 cool uses of mobile offline maps. (more…)
Difficult seeing and demonstrating the benefits to management.
We have heard these responses and many more from clients. Stepping into the brave new cloud enabled mobile GIS world is hard. But the benefits are considerable. (more…)
Why? Cloud services and low cost (mobile) hardware.
Simple? Let others host and maintain while you focus on the solution.
Our conclusion from conversations over 2013 was that many still see GIS as this complex system. They have nightmares remembering GIS technology choices, licensing fees, tuning/maintaining/upgrading servers, publishing data. But their thinking had still to move forward.
GIS was once a niche technology. It was expensive, and used largely by those who had geospatial training. In 2013 that picture began to change. GIS is undergoing a rapid evolution. The increasing popularity of cloud computing, and mobile devices: tablets and smartphones, have helped broaden the appeal, and reduced the cost of location technology. In this article we will discuss this evolution and look at powerful new ways to apply GIS in 2014.
iPad minis are cool. Their size means they are easy to carry; ideal for field work. But they are poor cousins to their larger relative. The biggest complaint is their lack of resources. Put simple they are badly under-powered. RAM is the biggest problem, try running too many apps or start using the camera and slowness and app crashing is inevitable. We wanted to demonstrate mobile offline data collection on an iPad mini. Our integrated ArcGIS Online mobile disconnected app has been recently optimized with this aim in mind. The short video shows the app in action:
GIS was once a technology used only by those with the deepest pockets. Today things have begun to change. In this post we will discuss 3 reasons GIS is now more affordable, for big and small organization alike.
With this years conference now over, I thought it worth listing my 5 reflections on the South West User Conference (SWUC) held last week in Salt Lake City. The conference was a great success. WebMapSolutions was one of the sponsors of the event, along with a number of other local GIS focused companies including Gateway Computing and CityWorks. We took an informal survey of SWUC attendees.The results we thought were surprising. Below we reflect in our overall thoughts on the conference. (more…)
Last week we were one of the sponsors of the excellent South West Users Conference (SWUC), here in Salt Lake City. One of our activities at the conference was to conduct an informal attendee poll. Nearly one third of attendees responded. It proved to be a very interesting survey on ArcGIS Online. We asked 4 simple questions; the results are below: (more…)
