SOFTWARE LIFE-CYCLE FOR AN ADAPTIVE

GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM

Katerina Kabassi

Department of Ecology and the Environment, Technological Educational Institute of the Ionian Islands

2 Kalvou Sq., 29100 Zakynthos, Greece

Maria Virvou

Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus

80 Karaoli & Dimitriou St., 18534, Piraeus, Greece

Eleni Charou

Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications NCSR DEMOKRITOS

P.Grigoriou , 153 10 Ag. Paraskevi, Greece

Aristotelis Martinis

Department of Ecology and the Environment, Technological Educational Institute of the Ionian Island

2 Kalvou Sq., 29100 Zakynthos, Greece

Keywords: Human-Machine Interface, Multi-criteria Decision Making, Geographical Information System, Design and

Implementation.

Abstract: This paper presents the software life-cycle for the development of a knowledge-based GIS. The life-cycle

framework used is called MBIUI and provides the experimental studies that are required for designing,

implementing and testing a decision making theory in a graphical user interface. The decision making

theory has been adapted in the user interface for is used for the evaluation of different environmental data in

terms of some criteria that concern the user needs and skills and select the one that seems most suitable for a

user.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Geographical Information (GI) industry is a

specialized component of the broader information

technology sector and has scientific and technical

links to many other disciplines such as

environmental science, engineering, computer

science, health delivery, planning and resource

management. However, Geographical Information

Systems (GISs) are usually targeted to scientists for

the environment and other users who are not

specialists find them confusing. A remedy to this

problem is the development of systems with an

ability to adapt their behaviour to the interests and

other features of individual users and groups of users

(Virvou 2001).

Given the popularity of geographical data and

the variety of users groups dealing with this data it is

desirable to develop Geographical Information

Systems adaptable to the users’ needs and skills.

Indeed, lately there is an increasing interest for

personalized GIS for making recommendations and

for this purpose several techniques have been

proposed (Malpica et al. 2007, Choi 2007). In view

of the above we have developed ADAPTIGIS

(Kabassi et al. 2006), a knowledge-based GIS that

can adapt its interaction to each individual user.

393

Kabassi K., Virvou M., Charou E. and Martinis A. (2008).

SOFTWARE LIFE-CYCLE FOR AN ADAPTIVE GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications, pages 393-396

DOI: 10.5220/0001939603930396

 SciTePress

2 MULTIMEDIA GIS

IMPLEMENTATION

The latest advantages in computer industry have led

to the development of multimedia and GIS. In

constrast to traditional GIS, multimedia GIS

(mmGIS) is not only able to collect, analyze and

store data in traditional formats i.e. text, images and

graphs but also audio, animations and video.

The focus of this study is to design a mmGIS to

promote the ecotourism in the island of Zakynthos,

Greece. The data available for the study area

consists of an heterogeneous data-set that contains

three major categories of data types: Raster Data,

including aerial photos, Landsat and ASTER

satellite images, scanned topographic maps and

scanned geological maps. Vector Data describing

administrative boundaries, road and hydrographical

network, the coast line, urban limits, soil data,

Corine land cover data archaeological sites etc. as

well as various footpaths and mountain bike tours

that have been recorded using GPS. Finally 3D

representations and Multimedia data such as texts,

digital photos, audio and video files were included.

Figure 1: 3D representation of the study area.

The GIS was implemented using TNT mips

integrated GIS and Image Processing software

package and it is available to be distributed in CD,

info kiosks as well as through internet as WEBGIS.

In order to evaluate different geographical

information, the system uses a simple decision

making model. The information that is rated highest

by the decision making model are selected to be

presented by the system.

For this purpose a life-cycle framework have

been used for the incorporation of a multi-criteria

theory in ADAPTIGIS. This framework is called

MBIUI (Multi-criteria Based Intelligent User

Interface) life-cycle framework (Kabassi & Virvou

2006) and involves the description of a software life-

cycle that gives detailed information and guidelines

about the experiments that need to be conducted, the

design of the software, the selection of the right

decision making theory and the evaluation of the IUI

that incorporates a decision making theory.

During requirements capture, a prototype is

developed and the main requirements of the user

interface are specified. At this point the multi-

criteria decision making theory that seems most

promising for the particular application has to be

selected. This decision may be revised in the

procedural step of requirements capture in the phase

of construction.

During analysis, two different experiments are

conducted in order to select the criteria that are used

in the reasoning process of the human advisors as

well as their weights of importance. The

experiments should be carefully designed, since the

kind of participants as well as the methods selected

could eventually affect the whole design of the IUI.

Both experiments involve human experts in the

domain being reviewed.

The information collected during the two

experiments of the empirical study is further used

during the design phase of the system, where the

decision making theory that has been selected is

applied to the user interface. Further, the user

modelling component of the system as well as the

basic decision making mechanisms are developed.

As a result a new version of the IUI is developed

which incorporates fully the multi criteria decision

making theory.

3 REQUIREMENTS CAPTURE

During requirements capture the basic requirements

of the system are specified. For this purpose we

conducted an empirical study. For the purposes of

the empirical study a questionnaire was designed

and distributed to 299 users. The users were

randomly selected from different places in

Zakynthos as well as other parts of Greece.

6 human experts analysed the questionnaires

collected. Such an analysis provided information

about the possible categories of the users interacting

with the GIS, the interests and the knowledge of the

users belonging to each category for environmental

matters as well as for the Information and

Communication Technologies (ICT).

The analysis of the questionnaires revealed that

the potential users of the Web GIS could be divided

to five main categories. More specifically, 29% of

the users answering the questionnaires were

residents of the island (this category contained

pupils as well as people of different occupation but

not the residents working in a public authority). The

residents working in a public authority of the island

that answered the questionnaire corresponded to the

10% of all users participating the empirical study.

However, most of the users that answered the

questionnaire were tourists (42.5%). This was due to

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394

the great touristic interest of the island. Additionally,

the environmentalists or researchers that participated

the study were just 2%. Finally, the empirical study

participated many students of the department of

ecology and the environment in the Technological

Educational Institution of the Ionian Islands, which

is located in Zakynthos (16.5%).

Furthermore, the analysis of the answers of the

subjects in the questions of the third part of the

questionnaire revealed what is more likely to interest

the users belonging in each one of the categories of

potential users, namely Residents, Tourists,

Environmentalists/Researchers, Public Authorities,

Students.

Finally, the analysis of the results revealed that

the computer skills of the tourists and the residents

of the island varied depending on the educational

level or the occupation of the person answering the

questionnaire. In view of the above, users could be

categorised into three categories taking into account

their computer skills. These categories should

correspond to high, medium and low level of

expertise in ICT.

4 ANALYSIS

According to MBIUI, during analysis, two different

experiments are conducted. The first experiment

aims at determining the criteria that are used in the

reasoning process of the human advisors and the

second aims at calculating their weights of

importance.

4.1 Specifying the Criteria

The six human experts that participated the

empirical study during requirements capture were

also asked about the criteria that human experts take

into account while evaluating alternative information

that would be appropriate and useful for a user.

These criteria are presented below:

• Degree of Interest (i): The values of this criterion

show how interesting information about

Zakynthos is for the users belonging to one

particular stereotype.

• Need for information (n): This criterion shows

how important information about Zakynthos is.

• Comprehensibility of the information(c): This

criterion shows how comprehensible each

information about Zakynthos is to the users

belonging to each stereotype.

• Level of computer skills (l): This criterion shows

how comprehensible the way of presentation of

each information about Zakynthos is to the users

belonging to each stereotype.

4.2 Determining the Weights of

Importance of the Criteria

The group of 6 human experts that selected the final

group of criteria also participated the experiment for

the estimation of the weights of importance of the

criteria. For this purpose, a scale from 1 to 4 was

proposed for rating the criteria. More specifically,

every one of the human experts was asked to assign

one score of the set of scores (1, 2, 3, 4) to each one

of the four criteria and not the same one to two

different criteria. The sum of scores of the elements

of the set of scores was 10. The scores assigned to

each criterion by each human expert were summed

up and then divided by the sum of scores of all

criteria (10*6 human experts = 60).

As a result, the weight for the degree of interest

(i) is

37.0

, the weight for the need for

information (n) is

30.0

, the weight for the

criterion of comprehensibility of information (c) is

20.0

and the weight for the criterion that

is related to the level of computer skills of the user

(l) is

13.0

5 DESIGN

During design, the user modelling component of the

system is designed and the decision making model is

adapted for the purposes of the particular domain.

Furthermore, the information collected during the

two experiments of the empirical study is further

used during the design phase of the system, where

the decision making theory that has been selected is

applied to the user interface.

After the calculation of weights was made, the

SAW method was used further for the calculation of

the multi-criteria function. According to the SAW

method the multi-criteria function is calculated as a

linear combination of the values of the four criteria

that had identified in the previous experiments:

SOFTWARE LIFE-CYCLE FOR AN ADAPTIVE GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM

395

cwXU

∑

)(

, where

are the weights

of criteria and

are the values of the criteria for

the

theory topic.

In view of above the formula for the calculation

of the multi-criteria function is:

lcniXU

13.020.030.037.0)( +

(1)

This function can be used for the evaluation of

information about Zakynthos and select the one that

seems to be the most appropriate for the particular

user. For this purpose, the values of the multi-

criteria function

)(

should be calculated for

each theory topic, taking into account the values of

the criteria of the activated stereotypes. In this way,

an interaction with the system could be adapted to

each user by selecting different information for

different users.

6 IMPLEMENTATION

In view of the above, a Geographical Information

System was developed. The described GIS operates

over the Web and contains data about the physical

and anthropogenic environment of Zakynthos, an

island of Greece. The information that is maintained

in such a GIS would be of interest to a great variety

of users.

However, different kinds of users may have

different interests, needs and background

knowledge. In view of the above, the main

characteristic of ADAPTIGIS is that it can adapt its

interaction with each individual user. In order to

adapt the informatio4n provided to the interests and

background knowledge of each user interacting with

ADAPTIGIS, the system incorporates a user

modelling component. This component maintains

information about the interests, needs and

background knowledge of all categories of potential

users. The information that is collected for every

category of users has been based on the analysis of

the results of the empirical study.

7 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we described the software life-cycle of

a knowledge-based GIS. The main characteristic of

the system is that it can adapt its interaction to each

user. For this purpose the system uses a simple

multi-criteria decision making model. However, for

the application of this model, different experimental

studies are required. Therefore, we used a general

software life-cycle framework which describes the

experimental studies that are required for the

application of any decision making model.

The application of the MBIUI framework

revealed that it seems rather effective for the design

and implementation of a GIS. In the particular GIS

the multi-criteria decision making is used for the

evaluation of different environmental data in

terms of some criteria that concern the user needs

and skills and select the one that seems most suitable

for a user.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The work presented in this paper has been funded by

the programme ‘ARCHIMEDES II’ (Operational

Programme for Education and Initial Vocational

Training - EPEAEK). The title of the project is

‘Adaptive Web Geographical Information System’.

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