How can I give project teams access to GIS without buying GIS software for everyone?

Giving more people access to geospatial information doesn’t mean every member of a project team needs a desktop GIS licence. Specialist GIS software is vital for tasks such as spatial analysis, data preparation and modelling, but many teams have much simpler requirements. They simply need to view a site, find an asset, switch between information layers, check project constraints, interrogate a feature or understand how different information relates geographically.

A browser-based cloud GIS can provide that access without installing specialist software on every user’s computer.

The GIS team can continue to prepare and manage spatial information, while publishing the relevant data into a shared online environment. Engineers, project managers, land teams and other colleagues can then access that information through a web browser.

This approach has several advantages. It reduces the need to purchase specialist software for people who only require part of its functionality. It can also reduce the stream of routine requests to GIS teams for maps, screenshots and data extracts because other project users can answer straightforward location questions themselves.

There is an important distinction between giving everyone GIS software and giving everyone access to GIS information.

Infrastructure projects may contain complex datasets, but many users need a simple way to interact with the results rather than the tools used to create them. Permissions can also be used to control which projects, maps and information different users are able to see.

Idox Geospatial's groundMapper is designed for exactly this kind of multi-user environment. It provides browser-based access to spatial data, documents and project information, with permission-driven access for different users. That allows GIS specialists to retain responsibility for more complex geospatial work while giving the wider project team direct access to the location intelligence they need - without making a desktop GIS licence the price of entry.

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