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Back to SAG Winners 2002
Civil Engineering Department, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
View Photo of Award Presentation
In conventional fieldwork for geotechnical studies, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to identify ground features in remote area or in natural hillside covered with dense vegetation. The information available on site is generally restricted to hardcopy maps and record notes prepared, without the flexibility of interactively retrieving additional information from the main geography information system (GIS) in the office. These constraints significantly hinder the efficiency, accuracy and quality of geotechnical fieldwork, on which public safety decisions are sometime related.
In view of these inherit constraints, the Geotechnical Engineering Office (GEO) of Civil Engineering Department has implemented a project titled “Mobile Mapping System for Geotechnical Field Mapping” with the following objectives:
- Integrate state of the art mobile computing technologies, wireless telecommunication technologies, global positioning system (GPS) and mobile GIS into a portable package to improve the efficiency and quality of engineering fieldwork.
- Promote application of GIS and related technologies in the engineering field.
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Business Problem Since 1991, the GEO has been developing and applying GIS, for managing its spatial data and solving engineering problems.
In 2000, GEO planned to extend its GIS capabilities to mobile applications to make use of the advances in mobile GIS technologies in geotechnical engineering field work.
A trial was carried out and prototype packages developed in early 2001 to assess the feasibility of the system in landslide field mapping. The trial and prototypes were very successful.
In 2001-2002 the system was fully implemented. Application of the system now covers a range of engineering field work, which includes ground investigation, fill management, landslide investigation, squatter studies, geological survey, engineering geological field mapping, geotechnical studies, and slope registration and inspections. Technology Implemented The mobile mapping unit comprises hand-held/pocket PC (Compaq iPAD) installed with ArcPad (mobile GIS software), interlinking with GPS device and blue-tooth cellular phone for data transfer.
Hardware support in the Office includes two servers for Internet access, and workstations to support project preparation.
Supporting systems include ArcGIS, ArcSDE, ArcIMS and GEO’s digital photogrammetry system. Spatial data such as digital topographic maps, rectified aerial photograph images, and GEO’s engineering and geological GIS data can be pre-loaded into the pocket PC prior to field works, or download on-site through the Internet gateway.
Field information on the features of interest can be instantly recorded on-site as GIS data, with their corresponding co-ordinates locations. Development Team Biography - The GEO of Civil Engineering Department is responsible for the planning, management and implementation of the project.
- Users of the system include engineers, geologists, surveyors and technicians.
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