A technical framework for community geographic information systems in low end smart phones

Abstract

Popularity of social networks and ubiquitous use of hand held devices such as smart phones have brought the usage of GIS into the next level. With the Geo-Iocation detection capabilities of hand held devices, users can share their current location and paths traversed along with useful metadata. Community GIS is generated at this level where users can contribute to map data make use of existing geo location information which others have already added. This has changed one of the other aspects of GIS which is known as Traditional GIS, where users have to pay and consume data available on maps developed by expert organizations. In order to use and contribute to community GIS a user needs a smart phone with features such as location detection, camera and a good display along with an application tailor made for the purpose. A prominent problem is that a vast majority of existing applications assume a high-end smartphone with sophisticated hardware. On the other hand, most users from developing countries, who represent the bigger fraction of the smartphone user base, still work with low-end smartphones that employ low cost alternative hardware and software. This paper comprehends an attempt to devise an application model for low-end smart phones so that community GIS capabilities are disseminated to users with less purchasing power. First, a survey is carried out to collect data regarding the smartphone platforms that will potentially dominate the low-end market. A client-server application model is designed targeting the identified platforms. We demonstrate a proof-of concept application for the model.