Spatial Information Systems which you can Make
Mu-Lin Wu
Professor Civil Engineering Department
National Pingtung University of Science and Technology
P. O. Box 17-164, Taichung, Taiwan 40098, R. O. C.
Tel. 886-4-4836886 Fax. 886-4-48333825
E-mail: mulinwu@tpts6.seed.net.tw
Abstract
An information system that can be implemented for collecting, storing, analyzing and disseminating spatial information about given areas can be categorized as a spatial information system. Usually, a commercial geographic information system requires sophisticated and well-trained technicians to run the system as smoothly as it supposed to be. The cost of commercial GIS software is not cheap. A cheap and user-friendly spatial information system is highly desirable. In addition, a spatial information system which can provide World Wide Web presentation capability is also a must. This paper discussed how can you make a spatial information system to meet your own particular needs in a short period of time and with a very limited budget. Implementing a spatial information system is a process of powerful web pages browsing. All information that relevant with a given location is extracted by hyperlinks of a given web pages. Maps, attributes, images, audio and video are all ready for evaluation and implementation. Several commercial plug-ins for World Wide Web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator are required and they cost very little. Any location on a raster format map is easy to be made its hyperlinks with attributes, tables, and other maps using web pages authoring software. A vector format needs special software to build hyperlinks but their cost can be less than US$500. Inquiry, map layer manipulation, zoon-in, zoom-out, pan, and print are typical functions provide by the spatial information system made by yourself. This spatial information system needs not to be confined to English. It can be your home language
depends on whatever Microsoft Windows 95, 98, and NT versions are. The whole system needs not to pay attention to computer programming. More powerful function can be made as well but needs some effort of computer programming.
Introduction
A spatial information system consists of hardware, software, databases, people, organizations for collecting, stories, analyzing, and manipulation information about areas of he earth. For a small institution, it is not a bad idea to make a spatial information system to meet one's own particular needs with little budget and small effort. This spatial information system may not provide full functions as same as those commercial spatial information systems do. But it can solve some problem in hand in a very short period of time. More function can be added into the information system by yourself in order to solving more problems in a more efficient way.
The objective of this paper is to discuss how you can make your own spatial information system in a very short period of time with very little effort and no computer programming is required.
Hardware
We need a personal computer which run Window 95, 98 or NT. A color monitor and a mouse are required. Computer peripheral can be added to your information system when your budget is available. At least, a color ink-jet printer or laser printer is need for output manipulation.
Software
Window 95, 98 or NT is the basic operating system to be used. The World Wide Web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape communicator are required. Web Page authoring software is essential. Microsoft FrontPage 98 is a very nice web page
authoring software for you to make your own spatial information systems. Microsoft World 97 provides nice function that allow you to change one World 97 document into HTML file format with several mouse clicks. Microsoft Excel 97 can change its file into HTML file format easily. A homepage is your key menu of your own spatial information system. All spatial information can be extracted on a color monitor by hyperlinks provided by HTML files. The FrontPage 98 is a very powerful and user friendly package that you can put what spatial information you need on a raster type map, in GIF and JPG file format. All kinds of attribute such as text, music, multimedia, video, image, and table can be hyperlink to a homepage.
For the vector type maps, we need some software such as Vdraft (Softsource Inc. 1998) to provide map manipulation function for us. When we extract a single map on a color monitor, we need zoom-in, zoom-out, zoom-extent, zoom-window, pan, layers on, layers off, and print function. Vdraft provides a very important function for us that we can put hyperlinks on a vector type map in different forms, say, point, line, polyline, and polygon. Its hyperlinks can be any URL on the Internet, attribute, image, video, maps , and multimedia. Vdraft can read Autocad DWG files directly, but we need change DWG file format into SVF file format using Vdraft in order to browse them in a more compact form and with many hyperlink capabilities.
Internet Explorer plug-in as well as Netscape Communicator plug-in is required when we need some professional multimedia on our homepage (Sankar et al. 1997). We also need SVF plug-in such that Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator can display SVF files in a spatial information system style. Most of this plug-in can be download from Internet with no charge for personal uses.
