2016 Intermountain GIS Conference

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) charged its GIS Program to provide a solution to implement field inspection workflows and collection forms specific to each DEQ Program while using a common platform to increase the ease of implementation and knowledge transfer for everyone involved. Based on previous coordinated efforts across the Agency using a variety of field and data management tools, DEQ Mobile was developed to alleviate many pain points of the field staff in data collection as well as data management and synchronization to DEQ’s GIS when back in the office. DEQ Mobile is an in-house developed solution with the ability to collect, collaborate, and verify spatially attributed data using a wide variety of mobile devices while synchronizing across all systems, field and office, in a transparent process to the user. It was determined that a combination of Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings integrated with DEQ’s GIS at the core would be used to meet the three primary components of DEQ Mobile; the Mobile Data Collector, the Mobile Project Manager, and the Spatial Data Reviewer. The Mobile Data Collector and Mobile Project Manager components were developed within AmigoCloud due to their open API framework, wide variety of supported mobile devices, and easily customizable data collection forms that could synchronize with DEQ’s GIS, an ESRI ArcGIS Geodatabase based system. The Spatial Data Reviewer component was developed with ESRI ArcGIS Online managed web mapping applications against DEQ GIS sourced web services to provide field staff and data quality technicians easy web based tools to view and flag spatial data for further review or approval. Once approved, the collected data is promoted to DEQ’s Production Geodatabase for use by internal GIS Analysts as well as updates to other business managed and reporting systems. Providing a customizable mobile app and platform that could be effortlessly synchronized with DEQ’s GIS has resulted in a very efficient development and deployment solution that can be managed by DEQ’s GIS Program limited staff as well as increased acceptance and integration with those that use it in the field and back in the office.