A software of the AML type at the service of geography and the environment.
Rating: 7 out of 10
IncentivizedUse Cases and Deployment Scope
It has been used as a test, in order to explore and determine their capabilities, potentialities and eventual weaknesses, for projects that involve data collection along river channels over extensions of more than 500 km. Specifically, it has been used by the Department of Oceanography and Geomatics to characterize the alignment and margins of the mentioned fluvial systems. The extension of the study area involves meridian changes that make it impossible to use flat coordinate systems such as the UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) system, which necessarily means that spatial representation must be done in geographic coordinates.
Pros
- It allows us to visualize data with extreme ease, through maps and graphs, patterns and tendencies.
- This visualization allows, in turn, to make decisions more quickly and with a greater amount of information than what a good part of software of the same nature allows.
Cons
- Being a web-based platform can, in some cases, be counterproductive, especially in areas where internet and satellite coverage are of low quality or are not available, such as jungle areas.
- The results obtained, in most cases, need to be interpolated, in order to completely characterize the study area.
- The interpolation functions are those that are typically used in commercial software used in this area of study, and have the same limitations. When using it I have not found any novelty regarding this.
Likelihood to Recommend
As previously mentioned, as long as the web platform works, the software is quite useful. However in places or areas where the platform operates with low standards (poor reception signal), the versatility and usefulness of the program decreases considerably. This type of problem in developed countries probably does not occur, or if it occurs it does very infrequently. But in non-developed countries, the frequency of occurrence can be a factor to take into consideration when choosing an program based exclusively on a web platform.