Development of mobile computing applications for hydraulics and water quality field measurements

Traditional field measurements for water quality and stream gauging still largely depend upon the pencil and paper field notebook for data collection. Recent advances in scalable wireless telecommunications and the proliferation of hand-held computing devices has enabled the development of software tools to assist environmental and earth scientists in improving the collection of field data. This paper describes an electronic journal which has been developed for environmental and geolocation data collection. The objective of the mobile software application is to streamline the collection process and improve the accuracy of environmental field data as compared to current practices. The integrated system includes automated control of a water quality probe and a global positioning system sensor, mobile geographical information system software, an internal database and manual input for other hydraulic and water quality parameters through a customized user interface. In addition, wireless and Internet technologies are used for transferring and displaying collected field data. A prototype system has been completed and tested in field trials. Potential applications for tile electronic field notebook include biogeochemical studies, hydraulic and hydrology studies and watershed management studies.