Design and development of a mobile GIS application for municipal field work

Abstract: Currently, Swedish municipalities generally use paper maps to conduct field work. A Mobile GIS (geographical information system) application could be a useful tool when conducting field work and field inventory work. In this master thesis, such an application has been developed. The application was developed for the municipality in Örebro and is called iSurvey. When developing a mobile application, GIS applications included, it is important to think about different interaction design aspects. A few existing map applications were studied to investigate what features they offered and how they were designed. The topic of interaction design and interaction design for map applications was studied. The most important aspects were the usability goals, such as effectiveness, efficiency, safety and learnability. There are principles and processes for application design and development that correspond to these goals. Among others are Shneiderman’s eight golden rules and product lifecycle management. When considering interaction design for map applications, the usability goals play a major role, but the general theories of interaction design can be applied. A selection of application development and web mapping techniques were studied. This laid a foundation for the choice of techniques used in the development of iSurvey. A needs analysis was then conducted through interviews with end users, which later together with the review of existing map applications lead to a requirement specification. The needs analysis showed there was a need for an application like iSurvey, and which the most important needs were for making the application usable. These important needs were specified as main requirements, together with a collection of other desired functionality. After completion After the application was developed, chosen techniques and the completed application’s functionality and design could be presented. The most important functionality is to view map layers from Örebro municipality’s geodatabase, to be able to make geographically bound notes and query objects on the map. The purpose of digitalizing and making the work more effective has currently, been partly fulfilled. Because it takes time to integrate new work procedures, this purpose is currently not totally fulfilled. The purpose of replacing paper maps has been partly fulfilled for some field work procedures, but not yet for all.