Performance of mobile GIS in conjunction withinternet bandwidth in rural areas

Abstract: The emerging techniques of mobile GIS applications, its abilities and its implied limitations ofinternet connections is the main subject in this study. Many of the operations that mobile devicesuse are dependent on mobile internet connectivity. Therefore the potential for it in well connectedareas is great but how would they function in less connected areas? Mobile GIS, which is todaymostly used in devices as smart phones and tablets, has internet connectivity for uploading anddownloading files and other data. Mobile GIS is also dependent on location-based services thatenable the device to get information or take action from the current location of the device. Thisresearch examines the potential usage of mobile GIS in conjunction with the bandwidth of wirelesstechnologies. It is important to study this issue to see if mobile applications can perform upload anddownload tasks within reasonable time in poor mobile coverage. To test the possibilities of mobileGIS in rural areas a test environment is set up in a mobile GIS application for septic tanks. Thetesting is performed by uploading and downloading data with real GIS actions from pre-selectedlocations that have low mobile coverage. The study is comparing the measurements with a scale ofacceptable time for download and upload. The result for registering (uploading) a new point inmobile GIS with three small images is that it requires at least 330 Kbit/s connection to transfer thedata within acceptable time. The results for uploading data without images and downloading giveseven better results and are not as dependent on a good connection for transferring within acceptabletime. The conclusion is that mobile gis applications are able to run within acceptable time measuresin rural areas. The results and other sources were used to make general guidelines for mobile GISapplications for use in rural areas.