Oral Presentation NCGRT/IAH Australasian Groundwater Conference 2019

Groundwater field data capture: custom mobile apps for the groundwater industry (281)

Alice Drummond 1 , Christian Borovac 1
  1. DiscoverEI, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Objectives

This study presents a range of case studies which develop tailored mobile applications to streamline groundwater field data capture that automatically syncs to Microsoft Platforms for seamless integration.

Design and Methodology

Tailored groundwater field collector mobile applications were developed in the PowerApps platform, providing field staff with the ability to customise the data collection, management and storage process to meet individual project needs.  Examples of different applications and features are presented, including:

  • Direct data entry: groundwater level, quality and geological bore logs
  • Google maps integration: Maps of bore locations to plan driving directions, and using mobile GPS to extract bore coordinates and elevation for sites where survey is not warranted
  • Camera integration: Ability to take photos and videos of the site and automatically upload them to project SharePoint site
  • Project information: links to health and safety documents, project background and communication information.

We avoid double handling of information by creating live connections between our mobile apps and clients existing Microsoft platforms (OneDrive, SharePoint, Outlook, Excel, Power BI) to streamline data processing and automate tasks.

Original data and results

The results from this study is a suite of tailored field collection mobile applications to streamline data capture and processing, providing an alternative to written data entry and rigid field collection apps currently applied in the groundwater industry.

Conclusions

The custom mobile application tools presented in this study have broad and wide-ranging applications across the groundwater and environmental industries. These tools can be used to both streamline data processing and improve project reporting, facilitating a culture of data driven decision making to help manage the future sustainability of our groundwater resources.