A web-based and mobile environmental management system

This paper describes a Web-based and mobile system specifically developed to monitor fish species at risk. Such a system integrates spatial functionality to allow users not only to visualise maps and metadata of the area of concern but also to perform context-aware queries and updating of spatial datasets. The spatial datasets are provided by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and the prototype is customised to the specific needs of the Great Lakes Laboratory for Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (GLLFAS) Fish Habitat Section requirements for fish species at risk assessment. Currently, researchers, habitat biologists and enforcement officers have access to the fisheries database, containing layers of biological information solely from the office. Delivering these data overlaid on base maps of the Great Lakes region to a GPS-enabled hand-held device and linking it to each task currently being investigated allows for mobile DFO biologists and enforcement officers in the field to make informed decisions immediately. In this paper we describe the system and demonstrate how it is used by the DFO in practice.