DEVELOPMENT OF A MULTIMEDIA FOR GIS

Abstract

The demand of GIS education has shown over the years that there are three categories of people who have to be exposed to this technology. The first level deals with the people who are administrators and decision makers who have to get a general awareness of the potential of GIS technology. The second level categorizes to the personnel from user departments who must understand the conceptual basis of GIS operations and analysis. Third level deals with technical manpower that will work in the systems and implement the applications in GIS environment. The main hurdles in imparting GIS technology are the technical complexity of GIS concepts and the compulsion to work in a computing environment. Although public investment in GIS research, such as the Regional Research Laboratories in the U.K., Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. (ESRI), USA and the National Centre for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) in the U.S.A. have added to the pool of skills but there is still a considerable unmet demand worldwide for GIS education. In this context, it is found that several new technical books written by eminent authors and self-learning demonstration tools built around commercial packages are available to strengthen GIS education. All these are however very expensive and beyond the reach of GIS community. This dissertation therefore aims to develop the multimedia for GIS, which covers the basic principles and applications of GIS, and makes it a self learning material. The main goals to be achieved by merging multimedia technology with GIS are better educational tools, richer methods of presentation of data, easier systems for novice users and enhanced management of spatial phenomena. The multimedia on GIS has been developed using the Flash 5.0 and Text Aloud MP3 software. It covers a wide range of themes, such as components of GIS, modes of data input, the geographic database, GIS data structures, some applications of GIS and some video clips. The text material is supported with voice, illustrations and examples to improve the presentation and understanding. The uniqueness in this package it that it consists of narrating voices with background music. To make it more interesting, sound and motion have been added.