David BIBBY1 / Benjamin DUCKE2
(1Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart / 2Freelance Geospatial Consultant, GIS Developer, Germany)
Keywords: GIS, Survey, Software, Total Station, GPS
Abstract:
Survey2gis is a software capable of producing GIS vector data from structured survey files recorded with total stations, GPS-Systems or other surveying devices. Input consists of one or more simple text file with a point measurement on each line. Output consists of one or more 2D or 3D ESRI(tm) Shapefiles containing points, lines and polygons each in a separate file.
The software is user friendly, features verbose logging and has been optimised to support efficient, simple field recording workflows. It produces fully attributed, topologically clean GIS data in standard formats, suitable for subsequent data analysis. The processing can be adapted to numerous workflows and input data structures via a freely configurable parser. Information input during survey, which is practically only limited by the capacity of the surveying device, is registered in the attribute tables of the Shapes.
Complex geometries are assembled automatically with options for user-interaction such as snapping the boundaries of adjoining polygons and/or stamping out overlapping polygons or “polygons within polygons”.
Survey2gis exists as a stand alone utility for integration into pre existing workflows and as a plugin to gvSIG-CE with preconfigured, editiable libraries for automatic allocation of sym-bology to objects such as archaeological contexts and finds during procesing.
Extensive field use on archaeological excavations in 2013 have proven the robusticity of the system.
The software open source and runs under Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.