M-GIS - Mobile and Interoperable Access to Geographic Information

This paper describes an architecture which can be used to access geographic information from mobile devices with limited display and processing characteristics, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) or Mobile Phones. The information may come from different sources leading to an interoperable solution. M-GIS obtains geographic information from sources described using Geography Markup Language (GML) from one or more Web Feature Servers allowing an access independent from its format or physical location, as long as the information is according to the specification. Using XSLT, GML is transformed to a graphical format in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) which can then be manipulated in the mobile device. M-GIS follows a client/server architecture and the client application was developed using Java Mobile Information Device Profile technology. The results enable us to conclude that the mobile system, designed and developed with the use of open standards and representation formats to access geographic information, is a viable solution with some limitations. The main limitations of this approach have to do with the amount of information which the client can, at the moment, accommodate.