Geotouch

GeoTouch is a multi-touch display and information portal developed by the Earth Observatory of Singapore. It is a useful tool to visualise GIS content on a large multi-touch screen. A natural multi-touch interface allows the user to pan, zoom, and 3D rotate maps and layers on display using touch to examine geographic and geological information.

The software was written using .NET framework and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) graphical subsystem. Its architecture is based on Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) pattern and uses C# and XAML as its primary programming and Markup language respectively. It relies on Microsoft Surface SDK for capturing and analysing touch inputs and ESRI’s WPF SDK for displaying GIS content. The base-maps and GIS layers are uploaded by EOS scientists which is the primary source of data for GeoTouch.

GeoTouch supports a variety of data types and allows for access to a variety of online mapping services. The basemaps utilised by GeoTouch are free online mapping servers provided by ESRI, Bing and Google. The software allows researchers to connect to other web-based spatial databases for real-time updates of data such as the USGS "Last 7 days Earthquake" data and NOAA Tsunami bulletins. Researchers at EOS also have the opportunity to load their own datasets onto the GeoTouch server as ArcGIS shapefiles or as georeferenced images and animations.

Some examples of capabilities are the surface profile, distance and area measurements, drawing, RSS feeds and querying layers. GeoTouch is a powerful and pedagogical tool for educators and geoscientists as it enables users to upload their personal layers and integrate them to the base map of their choice.