How can infrastructure project teams share GIS data with non-GIS users?

Infrastructure projects generate large amounts of spatial information, but usually, the people who need that information most aren’t GIS specialists.

Engineers, project managers, environmental teams, contractors and senior decision-makers need to understand assets, constraints or proposed works – and they need to understand them without having to learn desktop GIS software. The challenge is to make infrastructure mapping and spatial data accessible without stripping away the detail that makes it useful.

One approach is to give non-GIS users access through a simple web-based map. Instead of opening specialist software, users can view the relevant project area in a browser, switch information layers on and off, navigate to locations and interrogate the data they need.

This can bring together information such as asset locations, project boundaries, Ordnance Survey mapping, aerial imagery, environmental constraints and survey data. The GIS team can prepare and manage the underlying information while the wider project team gets a much simpler way to use it – and that has several advantages.

• People can answer straightforward location questions themselves rather than asking GIS colleagues to produce another map or extract.

• Teams working in different organisations or locations can refer to the same geographic information.

• Updates can also be made centrally, reducing the risk of project members working from different versions of exported maps or files.

• The important point is to simplify access, rather than the data itself. Non-GIS users don’t necessarily need fewer spatial insights; they need an easier way to reach and understand them.

Idox Geospatial's groundMapper tool is designed with this wider accessibility in mind. Its browser-based GIS approach and simple interface allow spatial information to be shared with multiple users without requiring everyone to be trained in specialist GIS software. For infrastructure projects, that can turn GIS from a specialist resource requested when needed into a shared source of project intelligence.

How Emapsite can help

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