How To Develop A Gis Based College Information System

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1 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.S 5 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 mvssgiridhar@gmail.com 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 570

2 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 userfriendly 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 571

3 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. 572

4 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, 573

5 identity and refresh options. Another tool has been developed to connect spatial and nonspatial 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. 574

6 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. 575

7 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). 576

8 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: Map server for windows (2011), available at accessed during February,