Mobile Geographical Information System: Using Personal Digital Assistant to Monitor Vehicle Navigation

Geographic analysis has been around longer than maps; probably back thousands of
years when early humans planned hunting and movement. Perhaps the first GIS were
scratches in the dirt or sand. Traditionally, highly skilled cartographers spent many
hours drawing maps, and map users labored over the analytical tasks. Modern GIS
arrived when computers became powerful, easier to operate, more affordable, and
generally available to many users. Technology has created many changes, including
geography, data, and methods of analysis. Modern GIS is a new paradigm, even more
so when Modern GIS goes mobile. The rapid growth in mobile telecommunications and
internet business is living proof of a radical change in today's information society and
infrastructure. The current phase in this development is the continued increase in total
mobility with wideband services. This paper explores GIS in the mobile environment
using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. It sees the research on GIS,
focusing on GIS in mobile environment. It presents the ideaof applying GIS concept in
vehicle tracking, where mobile GIS will couple up with GPS as a vehicle movement
monitoring tool. The Reuse-Oriented Development Model is used as guidance for the
project progress. The methodology is suitable as it stresses on component reuse. It
encourages timely completion of the project. A simulation of vehicle tracking and
navigating concept would be presented as the findings of the research. The simulation
presents the idea of real-time tracking of a moving vehicle using data output from the
GPS.
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