Summary

In all, the design of this project had several important facets that we wanted to demonstrate:

1. As our capstone class, this project was overall designed to show we could combine Information Technology with the Oceanographic concentration of Environmental Applications.  In layman's terms, we needed to integrate our major's knowledge of computers with the mapping application available to us in our concentration.  Our end-result is an integrated product that fully demonstrates the capabilities of combining computers with mapping, and has potential for future development far beyond what we have demonstrated here.

2. Using the MICRODEM GIS to record data points is a much quicker and efficient method than working by hand in Google Earth.  To accomplish the latter, lining up positions by eye and then individually dropping location markers would be a far more arduous and difficult task than the project would have warranted.  Combining the simplicity of the GIS back-end, data collection and analysis is a much more streamlined process, therefore allowing us to concentrate on a more robust database.

3. Google Earth can be a very picky & particular program, requiring maps to be registered in a very strict linear fashion.  We combined several different projections of maps in our project, some with different registration spacing, and the only way this could have been accomplished was by using a GIS such as MICRODEM.

4. Despite its robustness, MICRODEM is sometimes very particular about the formats it reads and displays.  Formatting data was a large issue with this project, because all the databases had to be written the exact same way in order to function together.  Using Microsoft Excel to update large amounts of data, and the built-in functions of MICRODEM, we learned very painfully to double-check all entries before running any display modules.  Consequently, we also ironed-out a few bugs with MICRODEM, helping to make it a more robust and idiot-proof program.