eWater
Geodan participates in the eWater project. eWater is an eContentPlus project and has as goal to increase the cross-border availability, accessibility and re-usability of spatial data on quality, location and use of subsurface waters.
Harmonisation and standardisation
In order to improve the accessibility information models have been standardised resulting in a harmonised geohydrological legend, maps and a common datamodel. In order to search and present these information a service oriented architecture (SOA) is implemented. A central portal coordinates the access to the different services. On this central level a catalogue has been implemented according to the INSPIRE, OGC CSW and ISO metadata standards. In the catalogue the metadata of the services supplied by the different geological surveys are available. Decentralised, at the geological surveys, services have been implemented to view geohydrological maps (WMS), to search geohydrological data (WFS) and to retrieve detailed information such as chemical analysis and water levels (SOAP service).
Mobile application
Geodan is responsible for developing a mobile application integration the different central and decentral services and spatial information in a user friendly way.
While developing the mobile application the newest techniques in the field of handheld devices and user interaction have been used. The mobile application has been developed for the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). A UMPC is a very small and mobile yet powerful PC running Windows XP/Vista. The software has been developed on the .NET framework 3.5 providing the means to include new interaction and implementation techniques such as the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). WPF offers advanced user interface elements and the possibility for user interface specialists to design the user interface independently from the program code resulting in more user friendly interfaces.
The metadata of the services are retrieved from the central catalogue and is used together with the location of the user to show only the services relevant for the user.
