An interactive spatial information management system on the internet: the fire ant spatial information management system

Abstract

The World Wide Web (Internet) has become an immensely valuable information resource. The appeal of the Internet stems from a combination of its near global reach, the ease of online publication of information, and the simplicity of access by users to that information. The primary purpose of any information management system is to provide users with information that is complete, accurate, and in real-time (Obermeyer and Pinto 1994). The Internet has the capability to do just that with spatial data. By creating an Internet-based, or what is referred to as interoperable Geographic Information System (GIS), it is possible to greatly widen the potential audience of spatial information, thereby increasing the value of that data (Goodchild et al. 1999). Not surprisingly, there exists a high interest in the spatial information community to utilize the Internet to collect, store, manipulate, and distribute spatial information (Abel et al. 1998, Carver, 1999, Oppermann 1997, Worboys 1994). Until recently, people wishing to do so have had to write custom computer programs to distribute vector based data through the Internet (Abel et al. 1998, Carver, 1999, Gunther and Muller 1999, Liping et al. 1999). This is very time consuming, costly, and labor intensive and has proven to be largely ineffective. Recent software packages by ESRI (MapObjects[]), and Intergraph (WebMap[]) have been developed to give GIS users the ability to distribute their spatial data through the Internet with little to no manipulation of their current GIS. An example of one such system is the fire ant spatial information management system (FASIMS). It provides necessary information regarding the types of fire ants and their distribution and abundance in Texas to facilitate a cost effective and focused management program. FASIMS provides an example of how to implement a GIS on the Internet to collect, store, manipulate, and distribute spatial data. The method used will provide an example of how to take advantage of this new technology to overcome the shortcomings of previous methods and provide a counter example to the theory that distributing vector data on the Internet "doesn't stand a chance of becoming fully operational" (Buttenfield 1997, p. 4).