The Polish Ministry of Health, Main Sanitary Inspectorate, has purchased 120 Magellan MobileMapper CE handheld GIS GPS receivers to more efficiently develop and maintain the nation’s database of potable water resources.
The Ministry selected the MobileMapper CE after evaluating proposals submitted by three leading brands of GPS receivers. The MobileMapper CE coupled with DigiTerra Explorer GIS application software and Magellan’s post-processing option met or exceeded all the required technical specifications and did so at a cost significantly lower than the competition. INS, in Karkow, is the Magellan dealer responsible for the sale.
The task of collecting points and information for the database, including wells, rivers, reservoirs, pump stations and descriptive data, had previously been accomplished using recreational-grade GPS receivers. In many of the nation’s 16 districts, there are more than 10,000 points to record. The recreational-grade receivers were inefficient, requiring data collection personnel to read the coordinates for each point, write them on a piece of paper along with descriptive notes, such as the address, administrative unit and water quality information. Upon returning to the office, all the hand-written data had to be manually typed into an Excel spread sheet. Now with the MobileMapper CE, data is captured directly to the receiver, digitally stored as SHP files and directly exported to a new ESRI GIS database, which replaced the Excel database.