Development of SOA-based WebGIS framework for education sector

The objective of this project is to evaluate existing and emerging Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards for use in LLNL programs that rely heavily on geographic data. OGC standards are intended to facilitate interoperability between geospatial processing systems to avoid duplication of effort, lower development costs, and encourage competition based on improved capability and performance rather than vendor lock-in. Some of these standards appear to be gaining traction in the geospatial data community, the Federal government, DOE and DHS. A serious evaluation of this technology is appropriate at this time due to increasing interest and mandated compliance in the Federal government in some situations. A subset of OGC standards is identified and reviewed with a focus on applications to LLNL programs. Each standard or recommendation reviewed was evaluated in general terms. In addition, for specific programs such as Gen&SIS and NARAC, a specific evaluation was made of several of the standards and how they could be used most effectively. It is also important to evaluate the acceptance of these standards in the commercial arena. The implementation of OGC standards by the largest GIS vendor (ESRI) was reviewed. At present, OGC standards are primary useful in specific situations. More generally, many of the standards are immature and their impact on the government and commercial sectors is unclear. Consequently, OGC and related developments need to be observed. As specific standards or groups of standards mature and establish their relevance, these can also be incorporated in LLNL programs as requirements dictate, especially if open implementations and commercial products are available.

The current review conducts a comprehensive comparison of Quantum GIS (QGIS) and ArcGIS in the context of healthcare applications, aiming to assist users in selecting the most appropriate GIS platform for their specific needs. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are essential tools in healthcare, providing capabilities for spatial analysis, disease mapping, and resource allocation. Driven by the need to improve healthcare delivery and public health strategies, this study compares the functionalities, costs, and support systems of QGIS and ArcGIS. The major objective is to determine which GIS platform offers the best balance of cost-efficiency and performance across various healthcare scenarios. The methodology encompasses a detailed comparative analysis, incorporating quantitative data from user satisfaction surveys, performance evaluations, and real-world case studies. Findings reveal that QGIS, as an open-source GIS software, is highly cost-effective and customizable, making it particularly advantageous for budget-limited projects and smaller organizations requiring flexibility. Its extensibility via plugins and robust user community fosters continuous innovation and improvement. QGIS proves exceptionally effective in healthcare applications such as disease mapping and accessibility analysis, where customization and cost-efficiency are critical. Conversely, ArcGIS is distinguished by its advanced analytical capabilities and strong performance in handling complex, large-scale studies. Its sophisticated tools and comprehensive spatial analysis functionalities are essential for thorough healthcare research and planning. Although ArcGIS incurs higher costs, its extensive feature set, professional support, and exhaustive documentation justify the investment for large organizations and research institutions engaged in detailed GIS projects. In conclusion, both QGIS and ArcGIS exhibit significant strengths in key healthcare applications. QGIS excels in affordability and flexibility, while ArcGIS provides superior analytical power and support for extensive projects. Future research should focus on integrating real-time data and enhancing user experience to further optimize GIS applications in healthcare.

The adoption of open source software (OSS) by government has been a topic of interest in recent years. National, regional, and local government are using OSS in increasing numbers, yet the adoption rate is still very low. This study considers if it is possible from an organizational perspective for small to medium-sized cities to provide services and conduct business using only OSS. We examine characteristics of municipal government that may influence the adoption of OSS for the delivery of services and to conduct city business. Three characteristics are considered to develop an understanding of city behavior with respect to OSS: capability, discipline, and cultural affinity. Each of these general characteristics contributes to the successful adoption and deployment of OSS by cities. Our goal was to determine the organizational characteristics that promote the adoption of OSS. We conducted a survey to support this study resulting in 3,316 responses representing 1,286 cities in the Unites States and Canada. We found most cities do not have the requisite characteristics to successfully adopt OSS on a comprehensive scale and most cities not currently using OSS have no future plans for OSS.

The South African cabinet adopted policy recommendations from the Government Information Technology Officer's Council pertaining to Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS). Even though the South African Cabinet has shown support for the use of FOSS through the enactment of a policy, the adoption of open source software in electronic records management seems to be slow. Proprietary software continues to be adopted and used by most public institutions, including local and provincial municipalities in South Africa. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate factors that may influence the adoption and use of FOSS for electronic records management by South African municipalities. The study adopted a qualitative research approach to collect data from 10 purposively selected municipalities in Gauteng. Data were analysed and presented thematically to address the research question. The findings of this study suggest that municipalities in Gauteng are not adopting FOSS for electronic records management as expected. This study established that top management support, reliability, affordability of the software, inadequate capability, contracts with proprietary software providers, organisational culture and organisational support are some of the factors that contributed to the low uptake when it comes to the adoption of Free and Open-Source Software by the municipalities.

<p>For precision agriculture (PA) applications that use aerial platforms, researchers are likely to be interested in extracting, study and understanding biophysical and structural properties in a spatio-temporal manner by using remotely sensed imagery to infer variations of vegetation biomass and/or plant vigor, irrigation strategies, nutrient use efficiency, stress, disease identification, among others. This requires measuring spectral responses of the crop at specific wavelengths by using, for instance, Vegetation Indices (VI). However, for the analysis of this spectral response and its heterogeneity and spatial variability, a large amount of aerial imagery (data) must be collected and processed using a photogrammetry software. Data extraction is often performed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) software and then analyzed using (in general) statistical software. On the one hand, a GIS is used for the collection of resources to manipulate, analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information. In this regard, Quantum GIS (QGIS) is one of the most well-known open-source software used which provides an integration of geoprocessing tools from a variety of different software libraries. QGIS is widely used to obtain VI computations through the raster calculator, although, this computation is performed with band rasters manually provided by the user; one by one, which is time-consuming. On the other hand, QGIS provides a Python interface to efficiently exploit the capabilities of a GIS to create similar plugins, but this can be a non-trivial task. In this work, we developed a specific and QGIS independent semi-automatic tool called <strong>ViCTool (Vegetation index Computation Tool) </strong>as a free open-source software (FOSS) for large amount of data extraction to derive VIs from aerial raster images in a certain region of interest. This tool has the option of extracting several multispectral and RGB VIs employing Blue, Green, Red, NIR, LWIR, or Red edge bands. The user must provide the input folder path containing one or more raster band folders, the shapefile with the regions of Interests, an output path to store the output VI rasters, and the file containing the VI computations. ViCTool was developed using Python PyQT for designing the User Interface (UI) and Python GDAL for raster processing to simplify and speed up the process of calculating a large amount of data intuitively.</p>

Open Source Software (OSS) is defined as a computer software that is freely provided and which permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in a modified or an unmodified forms. OSS is developed in a highly social online environment where developers are dispersed in space and time, but rarely interact in a face-to-face manner. Literature in this field specifies many successful OSS implementations in Academic Institutions globally. Educational Institutions have diverse opinion on the academic use of OSS. The concept of open access and the proliferation of academic blogs have broken down many barriers in the educational sector. With the reference of studies conducted in various countries such as Switzerland, USA, Australia, UK etc., it can be said that there are two distinct views on the academic acceptance of OSS. One view is in favor of the use of OSS, while the other is hesitant about OSS thinking that it could suppress the creativity of individuals. OSS represents a social dimension of Learning through a Persistent, Unified, Massively Multi-User, and Self-Organizing Virtual Environment extending beyond the traditional classroom into the universities common areas where learners build knowledge and understanding through serendipitous and collaborative exchanges both within and across subject area boundaries. The digitization of education is a relatively new phenomenon but has already transformed the education sector .Most Educational Institutions are operated on a non-profit basis and many of them are government funded. Open Source Software’s are freely available on well-known OSS Project community providers such as www.SourceForge.net and hence can be implemented in Educational Institutions at no procurement costs. This research is an attempt to examine the differences between the implementation of OSS and Proprietary software’s in Educational Institutions. Findings of this study could facilitate Universities and Educational Institutions to evaluate the options of using OSS for their Information Technology or Information Systems requirements.

In the present study, an automatic integrated tool has been developed for morphometric parameters using a proprietary software, Aeronautical Reconnaissance Coverage Geographical Information System (ArcGIS) developed by Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) and an open-source software, Quantum Geographical Information System (QGIS). Seven morphometric parameters have been evaluated that are drainage density (DD), Compound Topographic Index (CTI), stream order, form factor, elongation ratio, circulatory ratio and Lemniscate’s ratio. All parameters have been computed and compared between developed tool in ArcGIS, QGIS and a reference study. Fifteen randomly chosen points have been considered based on different elevation zones of watershed namely high elevation (HP) zone, moderate elevation (MP) zone and low elevation (LP) zone. Obtained results from both the tools show a variation in values of 2° in the slope. The average difference in slope obtained from ArcGIS tool and QGIS tool at high elevation zone is 5.32%, at moderate elevation zone is 2.72%, and at low elevation zone is 5.47%. The change in total stream length is found to be 2.56%. The average difference in drainage densities at high elevation zone is 33.79%, at moderate elevation zone is 25.86% and at low elevation zone is 16.69%. The average difference in CTI values obtained at high elevation zone is 11.61%, at moderate elevation zone is 14.75% and at low elevation zone is 13.87%. The percentage difference in elongation ratio is 14.80%, for circulatory ratio is 6.5%, for form factor is 17% and Lemniscate ratio is 0.74%, respectively. Results were compared with the reference study done on the same watershed, and it was found that for stream order, ArcGIS and QGIS tools match with the reference study. For drainage density, form factor and elongation ratio, ArcGIS tool produces better results and for circulatory ratio, QGIS tool is producing better results when compared with reference study. Although there are discrepancy in the obtained results, this method generates a reliable database of morphometric parameters and is very useful in the field of hydrology and watershed analysis.KeywordsMorphometric parametersArcGISQGISReliable database

This study is intended to investigate the perceptions of South Asian LIS community towards open source software (OSS) adoption in libraries by adopting a quantitative research design. An online questionnaire-based survey was conducted to reach the geographically dispersed population in the vast region of South Asia. A Likert-type scale with 20 items was designed to collect data. A total of 190 responses were gathered from four countries, namely, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. The collected data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics, independent sample t-Test, and ANOVA were used to draw conclusions. Attention was given to two independent variables: organization type (public/private sector), and library type (academic/public/special). The overall results suggested that respondents had positive perceptions towards OSS adoption in libraries. However, the results of the t-Test and ANOVA indicated that ‘organization type’ and ‘library type’ were insignificant factors, as there were no significant differences of perceptions found among the respondents on the basis of ‘organization type’ or ‘library type’.

Adopting open source software in public administration: The importance of boundary spanners and political commitment

Open source origin might appear like a major prospective change which is qualified to deliver in various industries and also competing means in developing countries. The leading purpose of this research study is to basically discover the degree of adopting Open Source Software (OSS) that is connected with Geographic Information System (GIS) application within Malaysia. It was derived based on inadequate awareness with regards to the origin ideas or even on account of techie deficiencies in the open origin instruments. This particular research has been carried out based on two significant stages; the first stage involved a survey questionnaire: to evaluate the awareness and acceptance level based on the comparison feedback regarding OSS and commercial GIS. This particular survey was conducted among three groups of candidates: government servant, university students and lecturers, as well as individual. The approaches of measuring awareness in this research were based on a comprehending signal plus a notion signal for each survey questions. These kinds of signs had been designed throughout the analysis in order to supply a measurable and also a descriptive signal to produce the final result. The second stage involved an interview session with a major organization that carries out available origin internet GIS; the Federal Department of Town and Country Planning Peninsular Malaysia (JPBD). The impact of this preliminary study was to understand the particular viewpoint of different groups of people on the available origin, and also their insufficient awareness with regards to origin ideas as well as likelihood may be significant root of adopting level connected with available origin options.

The application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the work of government bodies, economic subjects and units of regional and local self-government presents the real situation today in every European country, as well as in its regions. The organisation of collecting, storing, distribution and usage of spatial data, in accordance with the principals of spatial data infrastructure (SDI) presents the next (higher) level in the application of spatial data and GIS. Rapid development of GIS application in the last decade highlights two problems in the efficient usage of GIS technologies, entailing the usage of spatial data in general. The first problem is the lack of the concept in organising the spatial data that has been solved basically through the development of IPP concept. The other problem lies in the fact that the subjects and the users do not have enough knowledge of GIS and IPP. Therefore, special attention has been paid within the frame of INSPIRE project to the development of education concept for the subjects and users of IPP, in order to provide the possibility for them to use the advantages offered by the concept of enhanced technologies and IPP itself. The paper presents the current situation in the education referring to GIS and IPP, and describes the activities carried out for the purpose of creating the environment that would provide quicker and more efficient implementation of National SDI (NSDI) based on better information given to the subjects and users.

Open source REST services for environmental sensor networking

For many years, modeling and GIS applications have been used as separate systems for planning, design and operation of water distribution systems. As digital information becomes increasingly available, the potential benefits of an integrated model and GIS system become more obvious. These benefits of integration and resulting automation include: better service to internal and external customers, improved work processes and higher productivity, reduced data entry errors and duplication, improved data security and reliability, and improved emergency response. Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD) is developing an integrated system that includes a hydraulic and water quality model. Geographic Information System (GIS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), and other database systems. Model data is dynamically linked to the GIS information with unique identification features. The model utilizes GIS and other linked data to compute hydraulic and water quality results for master planning, operational planning, facility outage scenarios, and other what-if scenarios. The integrated system enables the data process to be automated to the maximum extent possible so that manpower and time is saved. This paper describes the significance of such integration and demonstrates its value with example applications. The examples encompass master planning, water quality planning and operational planning for rapid-growing communities. This paper was presented at the 8th Annual Water Distribution Systems Analysis Symposium which was held with the generous support of Awwa Research Foundation (AwwaRF).

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is one of the modern methods that contributed extensively to facilitating the tasks and performance of planners during decisions related to the development or analysis of a particular problem with a spatial dimension, and this technique has been used in many different scientific fields such as the study of the distribution of services, analysis of land uses, or the division of transportation. The paper aims to highlight the benefits of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in tourism planning, identify the basic stages of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications in tourism planning, and to identify the importance of using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the tourism planning of archaeological sites in Fatimid Cairo. This study was based on a descriptive analytical approach and the field survey method was applied in the sample method to reach conclusions that serve the objectives of the study. This study was finalized by several results, most notably: The need to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in documenting the monuments by transferring all images, data and written inscriptions on them and illustrating them through pictures and videos, to form a database to be available to the tourist, researcher and planner. The planning of archaeological sites using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the study area (Fatimid Cairo), saves time and effort by relying on aerial and space images and topographic maps with high accuracy and conducting analysis and reaching accurate results in a very short period, compared to the time required using traditional methods.

Previous research has shown that the knowledge that is available to an organization is an important factor influencing the adoption of open source software (OSS). Hence, it is important that organizations develop their absorptive capacity in order to successfully adopt OSS. Absorptive capacity refers to the ability of an organization to acquire, assimilate, and exploit new knowledge. However, no study has specifically investigated how organizations can develop their absorptive capacity by acquiring knowledge about OSS. This paper addresses this gap in research by investigating the organizational knowledge assimilation process within the context of the adoption of OSS. Based on a case study conducted at the Flemish government, a framework that is grounded in literature and that illustrates which contextual factors influence the development of absorptive capacity in the context of the adoption of OSS was developed.