New Generation of Mobile Solution in GIS Field “ArcPad”
Introduction To GIS (ArcPad) And Mobile Environment
ArcPad is a mobile mapping and geographic information system (GIS) technology. It’s providing database access, mapping, GIS, and GPS integration to users out in the field via handheld smartphones and mobile devices.
Furthermore, the data collection with ArcPad is fast and easy and significantly improved with immediate data validation and availability. ArcPad is a part of the enterprise GIS solution and is integrated with ArcGIS™.
ArcPad support both image display which is vector and raster map, including the ESRI’s shapefiles and LizardTech’s MRSID® imaging language formats. The data can be provided by the internet via wireless communication and the ArcPad also offer integration with an optimal GPS or differential global positioning system for real-time data capture.
There are many potential applications that can be implemented with the mapping system, such as:
- i) Street sign inventory
- ii) Power pole maintenance
- iii) Meter reading
- iv) Road pavement management
- v) Military fieldwork
- vi) Habitat studies
- vii) Toxic inventory
- viii) Crop Management
- ix) Property damage assessment
- x) Field surveying
- xi) Incident reporting & inspection
ArcPad can be used directly from an individual desktop or an organization’s enterprise format. ArcPad uses vector data in industry-standard shapefile format and it also supports the following raster image format:
- i) JPEG
- ii) MrSID (compresses images)
- iii) Window® bit map (BMP)
Both formats can be combined but the limitations of it were the speed and memory capacity of the hardware is used. Arc Pad also includes wireless data acquisition. The data is downloaded to ArcPad using the TCP /IP connection such as wireless local area network, cellular phone/wireless modem. 2.2 New Generation of Mobile Solution in GIS Field GIS actually is in improving all sorts of operations in organizations through the usage of mobile and wireless technology.
Furthermore, GIS is expanding in 3 major groups area such as information resources, process management systems, and real-time and location-based services. The second area that GIS fall is the information resources equals which is divided into two, the mobile GIS, which is related to the growth of GIS in the organization, in order to achieve better result, user need to do research on the architecture suitable in implementing the GIS and improving productivity field, and also need to determine on how to integrate new mobile technology with the existing system (support) while improving it.
Furthermore, location-based services benefit the distributed workers in achieving their intended results in their work field. Nowadays the popularity of handheld PDAs once again altered the GIS world. The popularity of PDA’s on the market, made the software and hardware companies keep developing mobile GIS software.
And there are two data collection software packages that dominate the market which is ArcPad from ESRI, and TerraSyns from Trimble (GPS manufacturer). Both are able to perform field data collection on PDA, either with or without an add-on GPS. It also elaborates on the usage of images, transferring image size, and others.
Read More: Choosing The Best Handheld GPS Device
