BeeGIS: a new open source tool for mobile GIS

Rendiconti online Soc. Geol. It., Vol. 3 (2008), 1-3

BeeGIS: a new open source tool for mobile GIS applications M. DE DONATIS (*), A. ANTONELLO (*)(°), M. FOI (*), C. FORESTO (*), S. FRANCESCHI (°) & S. SUSINI (*)

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

BeeGIS: un nuovo applicativo a codice aperto e multipiattaforma per il rilevamento digitale

LINEE (Laboratory of Information Technology for Earth and Environmental Sciences), has experienced previous commercial software development (CLEGG et al. 2006; DE DONATIS & BRUCIATELLI, 2006). Together with HydroloGIS, an environmental engineering company, the lab has now developed a new open-source system for geological mapping with a tablet PC computer in the field using GIS software: BeeGIS. Based on the Udig and JGrass GIS framework, in BeeGIS several new tools have been integrated. These include support for GPS realtime acquisition and mainly observations georeferencing. These observations like Geonotes, sketches and photos are stored into a file-based database management system. The current technology boost towards mobility greatly supports outdoor aimed instruments. Nowadays the price of airy machines has reached an affordable level for the average professional. Also the hardware features as to outdoor screen visibility and battery lasting time have experienced an enormous growth. A tablet pc or an ultramobile pc with integrated GPS and digital camera are affordable by any professional and that is also all you need to be able try out a different technique of field mapping, no more based on the traditional paper mapping techniques, but instead on digital mapping techniques. BeeGIS is not only thought to help professional to fully support his/her data acquisition (CARVER ET AL., 1995; WALKER & BALCK, 200; AKCIZ ET AL., 2002), as he would do with paper. BeeGIS wants to drastically reduce the loss of information by immediately entering the information gathered on site where the momentum is the best for the description and interpretation of the environment they are experiencing. The idea is to create a tool to be efficiently and simply used in the field by professionals (mainly geologists and engineers) who may have a limited knowledge of GIS and who want to minimize the learning time for new technologies. BeeGIS, is designed to support professionals as geologists and engineers on their outdoor activities. Focus will be kept on the set of integrated tools that make out of BeeGIS a perfect field mapping instrument.

BeeGIS è il nuovo software mobile-GIS per il rilevamento su terreno nato dalla collaborazione tra LINEE (Laboratory of INformation technology for Earth and Environmental sciences) dell’Università di Urbino e Hydrologis. L’incontro tra l’esperienza di sviluppo e utilizzo di precedenti prodotti mobile GIS da una parte con l’esperienza di sviluppo di GIS in Java, ha condotto all’ideazione e creazione di un software open source. Tale software è pensato principalmente per un utilizzo su tablet PC anche se può essere installato su qualsiasi computer, con qualsiasi sistema operativo (Windows, Linux e Mac). BeeGIS è stato sviluppato sul nuovo JGrass (http://jgrass.dev.fsc.bz.it/) che a sua volta utilizza la struttura di un diffuso software open source quale uDig (http://udig.refractions.net/). Oltre alle funzioni di quest’ultimo software, BeeGIS permette di: acquisire i dati GPS da qualsiasi ricevitore NMEA, catturando punti, linee e poligoni sia in maniera automatica che manuale; disegnate annotazioni direttamente sulla mappa con uno strumento che permette di disegnare e colorare; utilizzare delle Geonote per disegnare, scrivere e inserire con un drag-&-drop file di qualsiasi tipo (nel caso di immagini digitali è possibile utilizzare un editor per disegnare o scrivere sulle stesse). Nuove funzionalità, come il Field-book (quaderno di campagna), sono già nella fase di sviluppo. Avendo un codice libero, gli ideatori sperano di costituire una community in cui utilizzatori e sviluppatori possano incontrarsi e dar vita a uno strumento sempre più ricco e condiviso. Il software è disponibile sul sito www.beegis.org.

Key words: Digital field mapping, GPS, mobile GIS, multiplatform software.

_________________________ (*) LINEE, Università degli Studi di Urbino “Carlo Bo”, Campus Scientifico, Urbino (°) HydroloGIS s.r.l., Bolzano.

M. DE DONATIS ET ALII

2 MAIN FEATURES

GPS tools Like most applications BeeGIS connects to a NMEA enabled bluetooth GPS through a virtual serial port, accessing it with rxtx (WWW.RXTX.ORG) serial I/O libraries. Since also integrated GPS exploit this functionality, BeeGIS can also connect to those (Fig. 1). Once a GPS connection is established, BeeGIS offers a set of functionalities. Logging can be enabled, which activates a pulsing cursor on top of the map layers that keeps track of the current position in real time. From that moment on any feature layer can be selected and shapes of the contained geometry type of the layer can be placed in the layer manually. Points are placed as single units into the current layer. Lines are created keeping as nodes the chosen GPS positions, which is the same that applies to polygon layers, that are different only for the fact that the last point is attached to the first one of the shape. While manual taking of GPS points leads to more accurate data, the automatic GPS data acquisition creates shapes in the selected layer at regular timesteps. This can for example be useful to delimitate larger areas.

Geonotes BeeGIS can associate various geographical objects with sketches, textual information or links to any type of document. Once selected the Geonote tool, a single click on the map window pops up a new Geonote (or opens an old one). The

Geonote itself at first look is similar to one of those well known as post-it notes (Fig. 1). There is a title on the top, a color toolbar on the bottom to easily change the note's color, choosing between few default colors. The main area of the Geonote is divided in three tabbed areas. The first enables a drawing area dedicated to sketches, the second accepts textual input inserted by keyboard and the third, called mediabox, accepts the dragging of documents into the note's area. The inserted documents are stored into a filebased HSQLDB database. By double clicking on inserted document, this is opened with the default system application for that particular media type. This applies for all media types, except of the image types, for which BeeGIS provides an extra editor, that gives the possibility to the user to draw notes on the image with the digital pen. Annotation In order to keep the traditional way of filed mapping using coloured pencils on the paper map, BeeGIS offers an annotation tool that allow to draw and colour directly on the map as used (Fig. 2). After clicking on the annotation toolbar, a new layer (named “annotations layer”) will appear together with a new window with tool to chose annotation properties as: width, transparency, colour an possibility to erase every annotations or the last stroke only. This tool allows to draw simple lines or colour extended areas on the base map. It does not have any topological control,

Fig. 1 –View of a BeeGIS project showing a geonote with sketch. In the down-left frame, a GPS information are reported.

BEEGIS: A NEW OPEN SOURCE TOOL FOR MOBILI GIS APPLICATION

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Fig. 2 – The annotation tool allow to draw and handwrite directly on a layer. It is possible to choose width, colour and trasparency of the lines (left down frame).

but it can be used very easily in the field where the environmental conditions are not the same of the “armchair work” in the lab.

Other features will be added to BeeGIS also tacking in account the needs of possible future contributors. In order to download the up-date version of the software and to join the community of users and developers, you can connect to www.beegis.org.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS Other tools are under development at the moment: A Field book (see also BRINER ET AL., 1999) will allow to collect every Geonote (with text, sketches, pictures) in a well structured digital book. Browsing the page of the field book, a direct link location will be activate and the feature having an associate Geonote will be higlited. A Form editor will be developed to create customized forms which can be used for data entry during field work. This tool will be very helpful especially when the mapper must work within the simplified bounds of the interface prepared by the manager for the quick insertion of information (HOWARD, 2002; BRODARIC, 2004). Each time that a cartographic element is added in a theme, the appropriate form appears for the insertion of the data that must be gathered for the associated layer.

REFERENCES AKCIZ S.O., SHEEHAN D.D., NIEMI N.A., NGUYEN H., HUTCHISON W.E., CARR C.E., HODGES K.V., BURCHFIEL B.C. & FULLER E. (2002) - What does it take to collect GIS data in the field? Proceedings of GSA Annual Meeting. Denver,18529.(http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/2002/) BRINER A.P., KRONENBERG H., MAZUREK M., HORN H. ENGI, M. & PETERS T. (1999) - Fieldbook and geodatabase-tools for field data acquisition and analysis. Computers & Geosciences, 25 (10), 1101-1111. BRODARIC B. (2004) - The design of GSC FieldLog: ontologybased software for computer aided geological field mapping. Computers & Geosciences, 30 (1), 5-20.

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CARVER S., HEYWOOD I., CORNELIUS S. & SEAR D. (1995) Evaluating field-based GIS for environmental modelling, characterisation and decision support. Int. J. of Geographical Information Systems, 9 (4), 475-486. HOWARD A.S. (2002) - Capturing digital data in the field -The British Geological Survey's SIGMA Project: digital field data capture in a corporate context. Proceedings of Capturing digital data in the field Workshop 2002. (http://www.bgs.ac.uk/dfdc/details.html)

WALKER J.D. & BLACK R.A. (2000) - Mapping the outcrop. Geotimes, 45 (11), 28-31. DE DONATIS M. & BRUCIATELLI L. (2006) - MAP IT: the GIS software for field mapping with tablet pc. Computer & Geosciences, 32 (5), 673-680. CLEGG P., BRUCIATELLI L., DOMINGOS F., JONES R.R., DE Donatis M. & WILSON R.W. (2006) - Digital Geological Mapping with Tablet PC and PDA: a comparison. Computer & Geosciences, 32 (10), 1682-1698.