Development of new generations of mobile GIS systems using web services technologies: A case study for emergency management

This study aims to address utilization of Web Services technologies for development of Mobile GIS systems, to provide interaction between mobile client devices and servers in a loosely coupled manner. For many mobile GIS applications, such as emergency management, in which access of mobile clients to different servers is required in order to use their data and functionalities, developers are faced with different challenges. One of the most important issues relates to the nuances among different mobile devices that make each mobile device require its own specific server designation and implementation. To solve the problem, utilization of Web Services technologies for development of Mobile GIS systems is proposed. In order to address and investigate the proposition a case study on emergency management was conducted. The results of the case study show that with such a proposition, a mobile GIS client can easily access to different Web services and use their data and functionalities, requiring no specific server designation for specific mobile client. It is shown that simultaneous utilization of mobile GIS and Web services can considerably improve emergency management, by providing emergency workers and managers with up-to-date spatial data describing a current emergency situation and also different GIS functionalities required for better in-field decision-making.