A technical insight into community Geographic Information Systems for smartphones

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide inventory, analysis and visualization of geographic data to users of various levels. Users range from GIS experts who build models to analyze geographic patterns in data to general users such as travelers who need information on interesting places to visit and paths to follow. Popularity of social networks and ubiquitous use of hand held devices such as smartphones have brought the usage of GIS into the next level. With the Geo-location detection capabilities of hand held devices, users can share their current location and paths traversed along with useful metadata. An example would be a pedestrian taking a photograph of a badly conditioned place in the road and uploading it with Geo-location information for the consideration of authorities. As of today, a number of map data sources from different providers exist. Proprietary providers build their own maps and annotations and give it for a fee. Communities built map services, on the other hand, make the infrastructure available for a community to voluntarily contribute map data and consume them. This seems to be a promising approach given the convenience of getting networked and sharing geo-tagged information with the new technologies. This work focuses on the feasibility of implementing software infrastructure for a Community GIS driven by smartphone users with the current technology. Both smartphone native apps and mobile optimized web apps are explored and proof-of-concept apps are developed to demonstrate opportunities and challenges in each avenue.