Recently, the long awaited announcement came with great pomp and circumstance - the coveted Apple iPhone will soon be available from Verizon. If you are already an iPhone owner or among the 93 million Verizon users who will switch over to the iPhone in the coming months, you can find several apps that can aid in your GIS projects, provide information to supplement your map data, or just be fun to have. Not all can be covered in this blog, but here are a few of my favorites that might pique your interest.
“MapQuest 4 Mobile” is a free app that could serve as GPS unit, including voiced turn-by-turn directions. MotionX GPS, TomTom, and others offer similar apps. A new app called “Montgomery County (Pennsylvania) Incidents” provides the public with the latest information regarding emergency incidents (traffic, fire, EMS) throughout the county, helping citizens avoid emergency areas and find a clear route to work or errands (and reduce hazardous exposure to responding personnel operating at the scene. The “Topo Maps” app will let you assemble continuous USGS topo maps for your area with several choices geographic reference systems, including US National Grid. The simplest app for the USNG and a few others is “GPS2OS.”
Of course, apps from ESRI (“Business Analyst Online”, “My Place History”, and “ArcGIS”) can provide demographic data, assemble hazardous exposure info for places you have lived, and provide base maps, current event maps and an outlet for you to post your own maps. With a special iPhone case from Magellan, your iPhone can gather accurate geo-data that can be added directly to your maps.
Download the latest version of Apple’s iTunes and put that iPhone to work to help your public safety mapping efforts.
