GIS IN GPS

GIS in GPS

GIS IN GPS

Introduction

Solid waste management has come a long way from the days when refuse was collected in horse-drawn carts and disposed in open-air dumps located in marshlands outside of town. Today, it is almost hard to imagine how we were ever able to manage without high-tech gadgets such as Global Positioning Systems to pinpoint the locations of collection vehicles or to guide compactors on landfills to maximize air space. But times are changing because of these advances in technology. No longer do we have to play "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?" to guess where our collection fleet is located at any point in time. And no longer do we need to print out expensive acetate sheets to conduct an involved facility siting study. With so many of these advances in recent years, It is important to prepare a brief review of the best and most useful technologies in use for the solid waste industry today. (Mertikeas, S., 2007 Pp. 78.)

Geographic Information Systems Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been in use since the mid-'80s and, in recent years, are finding more useful applications in the solid waste industry. Simply put, GIS is a computerized system that integrates, analyzes, and models data from maps, surveys, photos, reports, and other sources and produces graphical maps, reports and plans for the decision-making process. Think of it also as a visualization tool. Assume that one need another landfill, or even a transfer station, and embark on a siting study. After painstakingly drawing a new map or series of maps that contain all of the important siting factor data and sensitive areas, one would start manually measuring the distances from all of the sensitive features (if one could even interpret them after one have combined everything into one drawing) to any specific parcel area of interest for oner facility. If one are lucky, one may get all of this done in six months and with a very high price tag. Additionally, the accuracy of oner analysis may be questionable because there is so much data out there to digest. However, as the IRP-based barcode system requires that all data related to materials and equipment coming in and out of the storage are manually entered, the use of the system can be time-consuming and fallacious.

To overcome this problem, this study investigates the integration of the IRP-based barcode system with the Global Position System (GPS), the Geographical Information System (GIS), and the Wide Area Network (WAN) technology to facilitate material and equipment (M&E) management to control and reduce construction wastes and to increase the efficiency of onsite M&E management. GIS is a computer-based system to collect, store, integrate, manipulate, analyze, and display data in a spatially referenced environment, which assists to analyze data visually and see patterns, trends, and relationships that might not be visible in tabular or written form. The integrated GPS and GIS technology is to build new capacity such as construction vehicles tracking to the traditional M&E management ...