Open-source mobile application development
Abstract
Open-Source Mobile Application Development for Emergency Data Collection
This Master degree project identified disasters and emergencies as a global humanitarian and technological challenge. Emergency management organizations ' need for access to accurate and up-to-date information about the emergency situation, to help respond to, recover from and mitigate the effects of disasters and emergencies, present a challenge to the field of Geomatics.
Today the use of remote sensing technologies presents an increasing number of solutions. There are types of spatial data, however, e.g. submerged, non-visual or otherwise hidden features that still require emergency field personnel and volunteers to interpret and record. By utilizing the increasing ubiquity and computational power of modern smartphones, in order to reach a large number of potential users and volunteers, a mobile application for emergency field data collection was developed. It was developed as a component of a system that, in order to be as collaborative, adaptable and accessible as possible, also to resource-poor organizations, was, with a minor exception, completely open-source licensed.
Field trials were held that, due to low participation, could not conclusively evaluate the application and its general applicability to emergency field data collection. They did, however, provide an adequate proof-of-concept and showed that it was possible to apply the application and the implemented system to a specific emergency field data collection task.
The system has great collaborative potential, achieved through openness, mobility, standards compliance, multi-source capability and adaptability. Its administrators are given a high degree of control that lets them adapt the system to suit the current users and situation and its flexibility make it widely applicable, not only for emergency management. From literature, the field trials and the experience gained while developing
Open-Source Mobile Application Development for Emergency Data Collection
This Master degree project identified disasters and emergencies as a global humanitarian and technological challenge. Emergency management organizations ' need for access to accurate and up-to-date information about the emergency situation, to help respond to, recover from and mitigate the effects of disasters and emergencies, present a challenge to the field of Geomatics.
Today the use of remote sensing technologies presents an increasing number of solutions. There are types of spatial data, however, e.g. submerged, non-visual or otherwise hidden features that still require emergency field personnel and volunteers to interpret and record. By utilizing the increasing ubiquity and computational power of modern smartphones, in order to reach a large number of potential users and volunteers, a mobile application for emergency field data collection was developed. It was developed as a component of a system that, in order to be as collaborative, adaptable and accessible as possible, also to resource-poor organizations, was, with a minor exception, completely open-source licensed.
Field trials were held that, due to low participation, could not conclusively evaluate the application and its general applicability to emergency field data collection. They did, however, provide an adequate proof-of-concept and showed that it was possible to apply the application and the implemented system to a specific emergency field data collection task.
The system has great collaborative potential, achieved through openness, mobility, standards compliance, multi-source capability and adaptability. Its administrators are given a high degree of control that lets them adapt the system to suit the current users and situation and its flexibility make it widely applicable, not only for emergency management. From literature, the field trials and the experience gained while developing
References: A type of request standard published by OGC (2013) and used by WFS clients to retrieve information about a specific layer information, including spatial data, and coordinate rescue and relief efforts (Cutter 2003). A type of request standard published by OGC (2013) and that is sent to WMS or WFS services to query the service for available GetMap request A type of request standard by OGC (2013) that is used for requesting map images from a WMS. GML Geography Markup Language, a spatial data standard published by OGC (2013) open standards promoting geographic information accessibility and interoperability (OGC 2013). the Open Source Initiative (OSI 2013). That is, users may for example look under-the-hood of the program, modify it for any SFS Simple Features Specification; a spatial data standard published by OGC (2013) SLD Styled Layer Descriptor, an OGC (2013) web map styling standard WFS Web Feature Service, an OGC (2013) web mapping interface standard for serving geographic features WMS Web Map Service, an OGC (2013) web mapping interface standard for serving map images is estimated at 3800 thousand million US$, with a distinctly rising trend both in the annual rate of loss (Neumayer and Barthel 2011) and the annual frequency of reported 2002-2011 (IFRC 2012).