GIS/GPS in Transportation, Real World Experiences

Guo, Bo, Allen D. Poling, and Mark J. Poppe, 1995. GIS/GPS in Transportation, Real World Experiences. Proceedings of the 15th Annual ESRI User Conference

A paper that summarizes the three types of real world applications of the GIS/GPS technologies

1. GPS as a Roadway Data Collector
2. GIS as a Transportation Database Manager
3. GPS as a Traffic Design Aid

The authors discuss the problems of accuracy and GPS signal reception and the problems in data acquisition and validation.

Location data collected through GPS units have intrinsic random errors that cannot be totally eliminated. To obtain the higher level of accuracy for any receiver requires differential correction, a process of placing a receiver on a known location, called a base station, and using the collected satellite data to adjust GPS positions compute by other receivers at unknown locations during the same time period.
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Bad GPS signal reception results in missing data. This has been another major issue.
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Due to GPS reception problems mentioned above, it was necessary to collect some attribute information using manual methods in the White House/Washington Mal project.
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Some of Lee’s experiences indicate that the most difficult aspects of GIS are not necessary at the technical level, but at the data acquisition and validation level.

Relation to my thesis: Real-world example of the use of geospatial information with the issues of measuring/mapping the physical space. In addition to my other reading in the transportation research.