Development of a Web-GIS Based Geotechnical Information System

The construction industry benefits greatly if all the existing three-dimensional (3D) geotechnical subsurface information of a city/country can be accessed at any time using the Internet. The geographic information system (GIS) is well suited for such problems; however, GIS was originally developed for two-dimensional planes. Recently, some 3D capabilities for GIS have been developed, but these capabilities in their present form alone are not suitable for storing and presenting three-dimensional geotechnical data. One way to overcome the limitation of data storage is integration of GIS with a relational database management system (RDBMS). A Web-based geotechnical information system that can perform online spatial queries, generation of professional borelogs, and various geotechnical analyses was developed. The system has been developed as a national geotechnical information system (GeoInfoSys) for Singapore. The system provides easy-to-use functions to: (1) locate and purchase boreholes of interest; (2) view borelogs and cross sections that are generated online; (3) provide downloadable data in a standard format for downstream analysis; and (4) perform geotechnical queries using a geotechnical search engine (GSE). The geotechnical information was stored in a digital format rather than as static images; this provides many opportunities to explore the data, and these opportunities are discussed herein.