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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING RESEARCH, DINDIGUL
Volume 2, No 2, 2011
© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN - 0976-4259
570
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.S5
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
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
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING RESEARCH, DINDIGUL
Volume 2, No 2, 2011
© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN - 0976-4259
571
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 user-
friendly 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
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING RESEARCH, DINDIGUL
Volume 2, No 2, 2011
© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN - 0976-4259
572
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.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING RESEARCH, DINDIGUL
Volume 2, No 2, 2011
© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN - 0976-4259
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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,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING RESEARCH, DINDIGUL
Volume 2, No 2, 2011
© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN - 0976-4259
574
identity and refresh options. Another tool has been developed to connect spatial and non-
spatial 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.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING RESEARCH, DINDIGUL
Volume 2, No 2, 2011
© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN - 0976-4259
575
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.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING RESEARCH, DINDIGUL
Volume 2, No 2, 2011
© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN - 0976-4259
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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).
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED ENGINEERING RESEARCH, DINDIGUL
Volume 2, No 2, 2011
© Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE ISSN - 0976-4259
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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:706-709.
5. Map server for windows (2011), available at http://maptools.org/ms4w/, accessed during
February, 2011.