WEB-BASED AND CONTEXT-SENSITIVE, MOBILE

GEO-TOOLS TO SUPPORT SPATIAL DECISION MAKING

IN HEALTH AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

Hardy Pundt, Thomas Spangenberg

Department of Automation and Computer Science, Harz University of Applied Sciences

Friedrichstr. 57-59, Wernigerode, Germany

Ronny Weinkauf

Brain SCC GmbH, Fritz-Haber-Straße 9, 06217 Merseburg, Germany

Keywords: GIS, Interoperability, Mobile GIS, Health management, Emergency management.

Abstract: The availability of reliable spatial information is often a prerequisite for rapid decision making in health-,

and emergency management. Meanwhile, there are many variations of “Geographical Information Systems”

(GIS) on the market, ranging from Desktop-GIS and Internet-based GI-services to various kinds of mobile

applications, the latter often localizing themselves via the GPS. The different forms in which GIS occur can

be used in various specific situations and for different problem-solving tasks. Some of these technologies

are introduced briefly, based on concrete examples from a running research project, called “GeoToolsHarz-

Advanced” (GOTHA). Some aspects that are worthwhile to be considered aiming at a better support for

health and emergency management through the application of spatial technologies are highlighted.

1 INTRODUCTION

Decision making in health- and emergency

management is based on spatial information in many

cases. On the one hand, health related issues concern

the spatial distribution of medical care stations,

hospitals, emergency facilities, and other related

entities. On the other hand, many problems occur

that concern the spatial relationships between such

entities. The "shortest" or "fastest" route between

private households and the next hospital, the

"nearest" specialized doctor, or pharmacy are

examples. Such relationships become significant

taking into account an aging society, where elder

people, for instance, aren’t necessarily able to

manage large distances to receive ambulatory care.

Both, the spatial distribution of medical facilities, as

well as the analysis of spatial relationships between

them, has to be seen in different spatial contexts

(local, regional, and smaller scales). Geographical

Information Systems (GIS) are an adequate means to

support the collection, analysis, and visualisation of

health related information. This is true concerning

the spatial distribution of health- and emergency-

relevant facilities, linked to fixed locations, as well

as the relationships between them. Furthermore,

mobile GI applications are able to track vehicles and

control how they can get to a place of accident or a

burning house on the fastest way, ideally taking into

account short-term traffic information and current

troubles caused by roads under construction and

similar issues.

This way, GIS in its various forms are effective

means to support decision making. Health-related

content, processed by desktop-, web based- or

mobile applications, can be used “indoors” and

"outdoors" and is therefore suitable to support a

complete digital information flow.

2 THE GOTHA PROJECT

In its current phase, the “GeoToolsHarz-Advanced

(GOTHA)”-project is aimed at the conceptualization

and prototypical realisation of webbased and mobile

GI applications to support route and travel planning.

469

Pundt H., Spangenberg T. and Weinkauf R. (2010).

WEB-BASED AND CONTEXT-SENSITIVE, MOBILE GEO-TOOLS TO SUPPORT SPATIAL DECISION MAKING IN HEALTH AND EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT.

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Health Informatics, pages 469-472

DOI: 10.5220/0002754804690472

 SciTePress

Meanwhile, there are many route planners available

showing different characteristics and functionalities.

A basic deficit, however, is the lack of opportunities

to define individual criteria to modify route and

travel planning more exactly due to user

requirements. Different user groups have different

requirements which have to be taken into account

properly, but aren’t in many applications so far.

Furthermore it has to be recognized that such groups

are not homogenous in themselves. For instance, the

requirements of bikers in the age between 20 and 30

will be considerably different from those between 50

and 60 (Wilson and Curzon, 2006). This might

concern factors such as type of bike, pavement of

roads, preferences regarding length of trip, maximal

difference in altitude to be conquered, road-types

and landscape aesthetics. But also personal needs e.

g. shape and health of the individual are important

aspects. Such “subgroup”-specific requirements

should be taken into account, otherwise the

application will not fit the market needs (Pontikakis,

2007). As a consequence, services must provide

functionality that enables users to specify their

special needs, conditions, and desires. This is a

challenge for GUI programming, as well as the

implementation of functions to calculate the “right”

route under explicit consideration of user-specific

criteria (Richter and Duckham, 2008). However, the

goal is not to provide prepared, static routes but to

enable individual and dynamic planning of such

routes, almost enabling the user to modify plans due

to changed goal settings. This requires also to

combine the route-planning tool with other

information that could be helpful during a trip, e. g.

accommodation opportunities, public transportation,

restaurants, shops, pharmacies, surgeries, etc..

From 2006 – 2008 the state of Saxony-Anhalt in

Germany funded the “GeoToolsHarz” project as part

of the “competency centre for information- and

communication technologies, services, and tourism”

(KAT) at the Harz University of Applied Sciences in

Wernigerode (Rudert et al., 2008). Within this

project, a prototypical web-based geoportal has been

developed that couples data of public traffic

providers, as well as touristic information in a layer-

oriented manner. The entry point is built by a

topographical map, other information layers can be

overlayed easily. The application is developed using

web mapping services conform to the standards and

specifications of the Open Geospatial Consortium

(OGC 2009).

The project “GeoToolsHarz-Advanced

(GOTHA)” started in January 2009 and is

continuing the previous work under some new goal

settings. GOTHA is now based on a public-private-

partnership. The brain SCC GmbH Merseburg is

supporting the project financially due to the

identification of common approaches and goals. One

aim of the project is to bring the expertise of both

institutions together to achieve a more sophisticated

approach to user-centred applications.

One focus of GOTHA is, apart from the web

based application for route-planning, the mobile

component. Currently, tests are carried out with

different kinds of cell- and smartphones to provide

geographic information, combined with context-

sensitive information about the surroundings of a

user.

Figure 1 shows a prototypical implementation of

a web map service developed within GOTHA,

running on a cell phone and showing points-of-

interest in a city centre.

Figure 1: The mobile component of a webbased GI-

application, developed within the framework of the

GOTHA-project, showing points of interest (POI) in an

urban environment.

3 TRANSFORMATION

OF CONCEPTS TO NEW

APPLICATION AREAS

The results achieved so far indicate clearly that the

concepts developed in GOTHA can easily be

transformed to other application areas. Web

mapping services, for instance, can be used to

visualize the location of health- and emergency-

HEALTHINF 2010 - International Conference on Health Informatics

470

related facilities. On the one hand, they must be

made available for the Internet via standardized web

mapping services. On the other hand, they can be

transferred to a mobile GI-tool which enables the

user to explore maps for the best route from A to B

or to find the next pharmacy, surgery, hospital,

police- or fire station. Of course, current attributive

information, or content, must be linked to such

points-related objects. This way, the web GIS as

well as the mobile GIS give comprehensive

information that helps to make the right decision in a

concrete emergency situation or in case of a more or

less sudden occurrence of an illness (Figure 2). Such

tools are especially helpful in unknown areas. They

can be used by citizens, but also experts, such as

emergency helpers, firemen, and many other persons

confronted with healthcare- or emergency-cases.

They have to rely on such tools that allow access to

spatially referenced information wherever and

whenever they want.

Figure 2: A variant based of the mobile tool, based on

another hard- and software platform; every POI enables

access to further content, e. g. healthcare- or emergency-

related information.

Figure 3 gives an overview of the current prototype

that underlies the GOTHA applications. It combines

a content management system (CMS) (Typo3 and

GeoCMS) to extract specific content for the web

application on the one hand, and the mobile

application on the other. On the right side the POI

extension, the route planner and other applications

are linked to the CMS. The mobile component,

however, gets further content due to its capability to

locate itself via GPS and therefore can give hints on

specific facilities near to the current location of the

user. In an emergency case, for example, this can be

the locations of the next surgery and a fast

calculation of the best way to the nearest doctor or

hospital, functionalities that provide automatically

urgently needed information to the user.

Figure 3: The content for the webbased and the mobile

application is, among other sources, extracted from a

Content Management System (CMS).

4 CONCLUSIONS

The results achieved so far are promising to achieve

the goal of more individual GI applications on the

one, and more sophisticated mobile applications on

the other hand. Users can easily access complete

content about health- and emergency specific

conditions in a rural or urban area.

Mobile GI tools, however, can provide the same

services. Additionally they can provide context-

sensitive information. If required, individual aspects

can be entered to get more user-centred results. Such

additional functionalities can be extremely helpful

especially in situations in which only little time is

given to search for relevant information (Pundt

2008). In emergency cases, however, such location

based, and context-sensitive tools as they are under

development in the GOTHA project, can represent

an important support.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The GOTHA project is supported financially by the

State of Saxony-Anhalt, and the brain SCC GmbH,

Merseburg, Germany.

WEB-BASED AND CONTEXT-SENSITIVE, MOBILE GEO-TOOLS TO SUPPORT SPATIAL DECISION MAKING

IN HEALTH AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

471

REFERENCES

OGC, 2009. http://www.opengeospatial.org. (accessed

October 2009).

Pontikakis, E., 2007. Wayfinding in GIS: Formalization of

Basic Needs of a Passenger when using Public

Transportation. GeoInfoSeries (ed. by A. Frank),

Vienna 2007.

Pundt, H., 2008. The semantic mismatch as limiting factor

for the use of geoinformation in disaster management

and emergency response. In: Zlatanova, S., Li, J.

(eds.): Geospatial Information Technology for

Emergency Response. Taylor & Francis, London, pp.

243 – 256.

Richter, K.F., Duckham, M., 2008. Simplest instructions:

Finding Easy-to-Describe Routes for Navigation. In:

Cova, T., Miller, H, Beard, K., Frank, A., Goodchild,

M. (eds.): Geographic Information Science, Springer,

Berlin, pp. 274 – 289.

Rudert, F., J. Grohmann, H. Pundt, 2008. Standardised

Geospatial Information Services on Mobile Devices.

Proceedings 11

International Conference on

Geographic Information Science, AGILE 2008.

University of Girona, Spain, CD-ROM.

Wilson, J., Curzon, P., 2006. Older People’s Experiences

Route-planning. Proceedings of the British Computer

Society Annual Conference on Human Computer

Interaction: HCI 2006, Vol.2.

HEALTHINF 2010 - International Conference on Health Informatics

472