A rapid deployment model for VGI projects in mobile field data collection

Spatial data collection in an organizational setup is growing in terms of the number of applications. While these applications are similar in providing the capability to collect and store spatial data, they are inherently different in the domains they cater to. For instance, they range from collecting data for facilitated Voluntary Geographic Information (VGI) like evaluating children’s walkability to schools or visual quality assessment of a community to crowd sourcing or emergency dispatch and large–scale census gathering. Mobile devices are a great medium to collect such VGI. Several constraints with respect to time, manpower and efficiency contribute to the lack of a technology model to enable dynamic creation and delivery of such projects. In this thesis, we address the research questions as to what a model for rapidly deploying a mobile VGI should look like and how to create one. We demonstrate this by creating a web–based project authoring system. The data collected from this system is fed into a Geographic Information System (GIS) model that automates creation of necessary spatial components and exposes them as Representational State Transfer (REST) services. An iOS mobile application consumes the web services and enables field data collection. The model also integrates multiple projects for a user while providing a domain specific means for collecting non–spatial attributes. Existing solutions for gathering data do not consider the relationship of attributes to one other. This thesis presents a dynamic decision tree implementation for the same, which improves efficiency and ensures correctness of the data collected in the field