The following is the description of a new product created during the last year based on the TatukGIS Developer Kernel that was recently presented at a professional conference in Prague.
GIS MultiViewer for real-time GPS visualisation for public security
By Janusz Kwiecien, Marcin Malinowski
Academy of Technology and Agriculture in Bydgoszcz
Poland
In the project a system was developed, that visualizes real time GPS navigation data over the public security system. Several mobile units equipped with a GPS-receiver can connect to the system and multiple viewer users in real time can track their motion. A client-server system passes GPS position data from the mobile unit on the GIS editor and vector/raster MultiViewer application.
The City Council of Bydgoszcz in Poland made a decision to render the data accumulated within GIS system accessible to public security system to improve their efficiency. The integration of functions of the City Telecommunication System, Fleet Vehicles Navigation based on distributed real-time GPS data, Video-monitoring system and data acquisition component with GIS capabilities provides mechanisms to access event information, manage it, and exploit its capabilities to the maximum in a synergic way. These components are the kernel of any application for emergency management. City police, fire and emergency medical assessment and response, immediately taking into consideration the exact map location of an emergency situation, distance from the nearest response vehicles, street layouts and traffic patterns, prior history of similar situations at that particular location or address, distance from nearby public health hazard locations, exact location of nearby fire hydrants, etc. Police departments may use GIS to geographically record criminal incident histories to aid in spotting geographic patterns of criminal activity and to most effectively position mobile units and route patrols.
GPS vehicle navigation in present development promises to be a consumer of digital maps and GIS technology. Already there are commercial navigation systems but mostly they offer simple street maps which refer to global coordination system WGS 84. They have not any connection to local coordination GIS system, which play an important role in assisting of automobile fleet management. The system implemented in Bydgoszcz is just what we needed, i.e. universal and can be applied locally (city) and on wider scale area (region).
MultiViewer is an integrated and autonomous Graphical User Interface (GUI) to be designed for viewing and management of city resources. It has been realized basing on client-server model in the form two or more tiers (Fig.2). 
Fig. 2. MultiViewer environment documents
One of the MultiViewer modules is a MapViewer serving GIS function as basic component. It has been made using Developer Kernel software of TatukGIS[1] (Polish-American company).
The TatukGIS Developer Kernel (DK), a comprehensive GIS development toolkit incorporating over 2,000 functions and properties, is competitive to any leading GIS custom development product available on the market.
The DK is offered as two separate products:
MapViewer can be configured for the dispatcher depending on type of the rescue service, in particular it relates to a range of tier accessibility. For using this module allow the tools placed at menu bar, which give a user to zoom, drag, identify and attach objects of basic map (buildings, streets, utilities, topography etc.).
Information from database about characteristics of every object we can obtain automatically at the view window when any element of the map is selected by cursor (Fig.3).
Another MultiViewer module is GPS Server being an intermediate tier ? logic application. Its task is to collect, archive and distribute of data coming from vehicles, which are equipped with GPS receiver. The properties of GPS Server are the following:
The base computer station using MultiViever was situated at University of Technology and Agriculture (ATR) to monitor two moving vehicles. A 14 km traverse going in one of the city district was selected. This particular stretch of the city has significant changes in buildings and curvature, making it a suitable traverse for testing the system. In figure 5 two moving vehicles with identity labels are presented at the Bydgoszcz city map.
Fig. 5. MapViewer for vehicle monitoring: a) MapViewer window,
b) Vehicle with identify label
MultiViewer system provides a vision statement for more simple solution and is not so complicated like a standard GIS systems. The main advantages of the MultiViewer compared to other GIS development products are:
Kwiecie? J. (1999): City GIS ?Building New Urbanization Network Infrastructure on City Bydgoszcz Case ? Proceedings of UDMS ?99 Symposium, Venezia, Italy.
Kwiecie? J. (2000): Mixing GIS and City Telecommunication System? Proceedings of UDMS 2000 Symposium, Delft, The Netherlands.
Laurini R. (1999): TeleGeoProcessing. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. Vol.23.No.4.
Prof. dr eng. Janusz Kwiecien
MSc.Marcin Malinowski
Academy of Technology and Agriculture
Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department of Resource Economics and Spatial Information
85-796 Bydgoszcz
Street Kaliskiego 7
Poland
Tel. +48 (52) 340 84 82
fax. +48 (52) 340 86 17
E-mail jkw@atr.bydgoszcz.pl
web: http://sat-gis.atr.bygdoszcz.pl
- ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION 2. REAL-TIME GPS SYSTEM The system have been designed and prepared to locate 100 vehicles within 100 seconds. The wireless communication and adequately Command Center and other dispatcher stations make possible to monitor a vehicle fleet on the GIS editor and vector/raster viewer application. The general conception of the integrating real-time GPS system and GIS is shown in (Fig.1).
Fig.1. The scheme of the GPS/MultiViewer integration 3. MULTIVIEWER
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- Borland Delphi/C++ Builder VCL
- ActiveX component for compatibility with other languages (Visual Basic, Visual C++, and scripting languages). The DK can be used to create an application that compiles into a single executable file, is free of Dynamic Library Links, compatible with a wide range of data formats (SHP, E00, MIF/MID, TAB, DXF, DGN, TIGER, TIFF, GeoTIFF, JPG, BMP, SPOT, and TatukGIS PixelStore), and royalty-free. The VCL edition is provided with full source code.
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- Furthermore the DK allows publicating the same resources via Internet using Web server and basing on IIS (Internet Information Services) like ASP (Active Sever Pages) technique.
Fig. 3. The basic information about occupants of the house placed in MapViever:
a) MapViewer window, b) Label hint information, c) Control panel
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- definition of maximum traveling speed of vehicles from which an alarm signal is activated
- determination of time duration for vehicle stand
- area allocation on which vehicles can move
- fusion vehicles in operational groups
- archiving course of route.
- The configuration concerning specified above properties is possible thanks to AdminViewer module (Fig.4) that is accessible from administrator level, however presentation tier going on at the client level.
Fig. 4. Two and Three-Tier Applications-Based Architecture of GPS Server 4. REAL-TIME GPS NAVIGATION USING ON-LINE MULTIVIEWER CONCLUSION
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- the Developer Kernel of MultiViewer is written in native Pascal code, no extra DLL's to install in deployments
- a lot of possibilities to render shapes (symbols, patterns, styles, labeling features)
- SQL layers to store shared data in a database.
- REFERENCES CO-ORDINATES