development of web-gis based college information · pdf file570 development of web ... it...

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING RESEARCH, DINDIGUL

Volume 2, No 2, 2011

© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association

RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN - 0976-4259

570

Development of Web-GIS based College Information System Giridhar M.V.S.S.

1, Md.Nazia Firdouse

2, Durga Bhavani.S

3, Viswanadh.G.K

4, Chandra

Bose A.S5

1- Assistant Professor, CWR, IST, JNTUH, Hyderabad,

2- MCA student, S I T, JNTUH, Hyderabad

3- Professor of Computer Science, S I T, JNTUH, Hyderabad

4- Professor of Civil Engineering and DAP JNTUH, Hyderabad

5- Lecturer, Govt. Polytechnic, Warangal

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

The project entitled “Development of Web-GIS Based College Information System” aims at

developing a web application to access spatial data through the browser. It provides an

environment for constructing spatially enabled Internet-Web applications. Using ArcGIS

Desktop, it is possible to generate maps but cannot be shared across the web. Thus, this

project aims at developing a web application to facilitate sharing. The interface is created by

taking into consideration, the requirements of the user and optimizing the functionality of the

application while keeping it simple for the user to interact with the application. The primary

objective of this project is to bring information to the door step of users about the status of

colleges in a particular place regarding the availability of colleges, courses, intake, faculty

availability, admission procedure. The tool is a general information system which can be

accessed anywhere in the world. In this project, a map showing the list of various colleges in

the given area is developed and is displayed on the browser through web GIS. The user can

search for a particular college using search option or he can directly interact with the map

using zooming and panning options and mouse events. Based on user’s requirement, the list

of colleges in a mandal or details of a particular college are displayed. The data

corresponding to colleges and mandals can also be accessed by clicking on the map. Further,

queries can be made to search for different categories of courses in the selected college.

Keywords: GIS, Personal Geo-databases, Shape files, Feature classes, Map Server.

1. Introduction

In the modern world, communicating information clearly is critical in every aspect of life viz.,

business, science and politics. In this context, maps can show more clearly than any tabular

format regarding information related to a location, enabling the user to review the

information in terms of its spatial orientation. So an application which helps the users in

accessing the spatial data is essential. While this distribution information is implicit in a table

of numbers, it can be difficult or impossible to see. So an application which let the users

access the spatial and non-spatial data is required. This project creates an application that

displays the data about the college on the map. The problem consists of enabling the end user

to get the spatial information required by the user easily, so that the user can analyze the

spatial information of a certain mandal in the form of layer. Each layer provides different

information such as list of colleges in a mandal or details of a particular college. It consists of

enabling the end user to get the spatial information of a particular region, that means details





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of colleges and also to find out the location of the selected college on the map. ArcGIS

Desktop is required to create maps and to Map Server is required to access the map through

browser. ArcGIS Desktop is a collection of software products for building complete

geographic information systems (GIS). Map Server is an open source development

environment for building spatially-enabled internet applications. It can run as a CGI program

or via Map script which supports several programming languages such as Perl, Python or

PHP. Map Server creates map images from spatial information.

The maps that were created using ArcGIS desktop cannot be shared. If a user wishes to view

the map, he should also install the ArcGIS desktop in his system which is not an effective

solution. To share this map across the browser, Web GIS is required. Web GIS enables

individuals and organizations to communicate geographically to the users via the internet. It

provides the users interactive query capabilities. It allows end-users to view geographic data

using their existing web browser without GIS software. It makes it possible for GIS to be

integrated with other technologies.

Many of the new methodologies aimed at the development of web sites have focused on the

user interface (and in particular the look and feel), but have failed to address the wider

aspects of web-based information systems (Howcroft & Carroll, 2000). At the same time,

traditional pre-Internet information system (IS) methodologies have struggled to

accommodate web specific aspects into their methods and work practices. A notable

exception is Connallen (2000), who has adapted the unified modeling language (UML) to

web applications.

Surinaidu et.al.,(2010) developed Groundwater Information System for farmers and policy

Makers. It makes available freely an immense body of information that is of great knowledge to

farmers, policy makers, academic and research value. Ahmad Zawawi (2005) developed Web-based

Prototype information System Resource management for Cendena College. The difficulties in

gathering information by students have been highlighted in the paper. Dynamic Web programming

language and Hypertext Preprocessor language has also been discussed. The focus of the present

work is on developing an application to help the users access spatial and non-spatial data

associated with the map using different categories. The aim of the project is to provide a user-

friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) to the end user in which he can query information

regarding colleges. This GUI interacts with Map Server, which in turn interacts with the

ArcGIS Desktop to retrieve the spatial information and then displays on the browser. This

interface consists of search option and the map. Users can search for a particular category of

courses, for a particular region and also for a specific college using search option. Thus it is

possible to retrieve the required college’s details. Users can also directly interact with the

map by zooming, panning and clicking on the map. The primary objective of this project is to

bring information to the door step of users about the status of colleges in a particular place

regarding the availability of colleges, courses, intake, faculty availability, admission

procedure. The tool is a general information system which can be accessed anywhere in the

world.

2. System Environment





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The architecture for this project is a client-server architecture in which the end users are the

clients and the system that includes ArcGIS Desktop and Map Server is the server. The

database required to give response to the user’s queries is presented at server’s side. It is a

three-tier architecture in which the user interface acts as a presentation tier, Map Server acts

as application tier and ArcGIS Desktop acts as data tier. The hardware and software

environment used for development of the project at the server side are presented in detail

below.

2.1 Hardware Environment: This section summarizes the hardware configuration used for

the development of interface. Processor : Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU (3.40 GHz)

Hard Disk : 160 GB

RAM : 1 GB

2.2 Software Environment: This section summarizes the software servers, languages and

the Operating System used for the development of the project.

Operating System : Windows XP

Web Technologies : PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax

Web Server : Apache Tomcat, Map Server

Web Browser : Mozilla Firefox

GIS Software : ArcGIS Desktop.

2.3 System Environment for Client: Since this project is a web application, in order to

access the website, the clients must have internet connection with JavaScript enabled. The

website can be best viewed in Mozilla Firefox.

3. Implementation

The process of implementation includes three parts which include creating a map using

ArcGIS Desktop, displaying the map on the browser using Map Server and providing

functionalities for the map such as zoom in and zoom out, identity and refresh and Display

map based on search option.

3.1 Creating a map using ArcGIS Desktop: The maps created in ArcGIS Desktop are

shape files. These shape files are created using ArcCatalog which are empty initially. So they

need to be edited using ArcMap. ArcMap allows for adding data to shape files. In this

project, two shape files are created one for locating mandals and the other for locating

colleges. The colleges are located based on their nearby latitude and longitude and all the

details of the colleges such as college name, code, principal and chairman details and courses

offered have been added to the attribute table of the shape files which are stored as dbf files.

3.2 Displaying the map on the browser: In order to display the map, a map file has to be

created which specifies the extent of the map to be displayed, shape path of the map, the path

for storing the Map Server created GIFs, number of layers and labels for the layers. Using

various PHP map script API’s and HTML, the map is displayed on the browser. Once the

map is displayed, in order to make it user-friendly zooming, panning, refresh and identity

options have been added to the map. The identity option retrieves the spatial data associated

with a map and displays in a new window.





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3.3 Displaying the map based on search option: The various input modes for search option

is search for a list of colleges in a particular region, search for a category of courses such as

B.Tech, MCA, MBA, search for a category of course in a particular region, search for a

college in a mandal. The output will be highlighting the portion of the region selected by the

map. If the user selects only a region, when clicked on the map, the list of various colleges in

that mandal is popped-up in the form of hyperlinks. When clicked on any college, the details

of the college will be popped-up. If the user selects a mandal and a course, a portion of the

map showing only the colleges offering the selected course will be highlighted. If the user

selects a college, the college’s location will be highlighted on the map and the details will be

displayed. Thus, both spatial and non-spatial data are linked.

4. Results

All the modules of the system have been tested successfully. Data pertaining to has been

collected from reliable sources. The shape files for mandals and colleges have been created

and the locations of the colleges have been given on the map. Map has been displayed on the

browser using Map Server. Functionality has been developed to retrieve the data pertaining to

colleges from the database.

Figure 1: Home page on the webpage showing all mandals of the selected district

Similarly, to zoom in, zoom out, pan and refresh the map, as well as to take input in two

modes also, tools have been developed in GIS environment. The input can be a mandal, a

course, mandal and course or mandal, course and college if the input mode is search option.

If the input mode is mouse click, user can interact with the map using zoom in, zoom out,





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identity and refresh options. Another tool has been developed to connect spatial and non-

spatial data. To highlight the region, based on user’s input from the search option, tool option

has been created. Functionality has been developed to query the map using identity option

which pop-ups a window displaying the queried data. Home page generated from ArcGIS

Desktop on the webpage showing all mandals of the selected district is shown in figure 1

Map showing all colleges in the selected mandal when user performs zoom in and identity

options is shown in figure 2. Map showing a pop-up window listing all the colleges in the

highlighted mandal is presented in figure 3. Map highlighting the portion of the region

selected by the user using search option when user selects a mandal is shown in figure 4. Map

showing only the colleges offering the selected course in selected mandal when user selects a

mandal and a course is shown in figure 5. Map showing the college’s location and displaying

details of the selected college when user selects a college is shown in figure 6.

Figure 2: Map showing all colleges in the selected mandal.





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Figure 3: Map showing a pop-up window listing all the colleges in the highlighted mandal.

Figure 4: Map highlighting the portion of the region selected by the user using search option.





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Figure 5: Map showing only the colleges offering the selected course in selected mandal.

Figure 6 Map showing the college’s location and displaying details of the selected college.

5. Conclusions

Data collection pertaining to colleges has been carried out from reliable sources and testing of

all the modules has yielded successful results. For all mandals and colleges, the shape files

have been created with appropriate labeling of locations on the map. The map has been

displayed on the browser using Map Server. The developed “Web-GIS based College

Information System” makes available freely an immense body of information that is of great

use to students, parents, and academicians. The study clearly demonstrated that interactive

integration of spatial data and non-spatial data in GIS environment provides a powerful tool.

Manual search and identification of the required information in order to arrive at the decision

is tedious and time consuming. The developed system proved to be of greater efficiency and

accuracy of using Web-GIS compared to other traditional methods.

6. References

1. Ahmad Zawawi, (2005), Development of Web based prototype Information System

Farmers & Resource management for Cendena College (CCRMS), UiTM, Shah Alam, a

Project paper submitted to MARA University, Faculty of Information Technology and

Quantitative Sciences.

2. Connallen, J., (2000), Building Web Applications with UML, Addison-Wesley, Reading,

MA.

3. Howcroft, D. & Carroll, J., (2000), A proposed methodology for web development. In:

ECIS 2000, a Cyberspace Odyssey, Hansen, H.R., Bichler, M. & Mahrer, H.(eds).





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Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference on Information Systems, Vienna, 3–5

July.

4. L. Surinaidu, V.V.S. Gurunadharao, P.S. Acharya, (2010), “Groundwater Information

System for Farmers & Policy Makers” proceedings of ICHWAM-2010; organized by

centre for water resources, JNTUH, Hyderabad, Vol: I, pp:706-709.

5. Map server for windows (2011), available at http://maptools.org/ms4w/, accessed during

February, 2011.

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