I imagine that a lot of people use their GPS for the sole purpose of navigating large cities, long road trips or even just for entertainment but there are a lot of other things that this information can be used for.
Although some of these suggestions may not be related to how I personally use a GPS they can serve as a starting point for ideas on how to use the valuable information collected by these devices.
This is where I use my GPS the most. I’m in the mining and exploration field and I use my GPS to record rock and soil samples, geological features, property boundaries, elevations for access planning, area features for exploitation planning.
Some other uses that fall under this heading may be logging of fire damage, insect infestation or erosion.
Sometimes trucking companies take on contracts that are very consistent and they drive the same route over and over again delivering products on an ongoing contract basis. A GPS would enable the proprietor to track and compile the route information to better understand any inefficient points in the journey. The results may indicate that leaving 2 hours earlier could save on fuel because of congested road conditions and this could result in improved efficiency. With GPS availability in a wide variety of devices, getting started tracking your data could be as simple as buying a new cellular phone for your drivers.
Not that you’d absolutely need to have a GPS to do this but you could go on your tour and take GPS readings of the stops that you are going to make and pictures of those areas or objects that you may see. If you’re lucky you can tag your images with GPS information and have them all show up on Google Earth. Again with Google Earth you can create a movie that has your pictures imbedded - use this as a selling or presentation tool.
There are a lot of programs out there that will let you modify the Exif headers for your images, this process is known as Geocoding. Google Earth will allow you to do this and you can achieve excellent results - but if you feel you need a utility program to actually see what is going on you can use a program like iTag, PhotoMapper or GeoSetter to do your geocoding.
Sometimes it is a lot easier to see where things are in an overview scale. Taking GPS readings of your material assets and locating them on maps can potentially help you design better routing systems.
These are just some of the ideas that I have had - I’m sure that there’s a lot more uses for GPS data too. If you’d like - leave a comment about how you use your GPS information, I’d love to hear about it.
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