GIS Pro is an application built for the iPhone and iPad, aiming for the GIS professionals that want a really flexible, easy to learn, low-cost solution for field data collection.

With GIS Pro, you can work easily through your data collection on the field using a device and an operating system that you know and trust. GIS Pro allows for point, line and polygon capture and edit with its very user friendly drawing and editing tools. We had no problems working with the insertion of data in GIS Pro, in fact we found the experience quite pleasant, the map browsing being very smooth and with no issues in display. Remember though to change the map display from Google Terrain to your choice, as this default option should only be used for very small scales. The editing tools that GIS Pro implements for changing the objects you have created are a delight to work with, the application seems to utilize in full the iOS user interface capability, and editing a polygon was never so easy, even if you have large fingers like our team does. You can of course use your device’s GPS or an external compatible GPS unit to get some help for the data collection.

In terms of organizing your work, GIS Pro comes with a very easy function of creating your own feature classes and inserting your data to its respective feature class. You can even create all the attributes you need for each feature class, and use internal iOS functions to insert other data, such as photos. Being able to keep your whole data capture process mobile by being able to create feature classes as you work is both innovative and valuable and will help reduce the workflow in a lot of real-work cases.

Some extra features like import and export of shapefiles, offline work mode by caching user selected portions of the maps, raster overlay, distance measurement and multiple project capability, GIS Pro covers pretty much everything the field data collector will need to get his job done efficiently.

The software is well supported from the company that developed it; the documentation provided is quite extensive, ranging from a very detailed wiki-type knowledge base to tutorials and video guides through its functionality, that will cover even the most demanding or inexperienced user. In fact, the learning tools provided could easily match -and in some cases exceed- those given by most commercial GIS software.

GIS Pro is a great solution for fast and easy data collection from the field, with an extremely low cost. Field data collection companies can save a lot of money not only on the data collection application itself, but also on the extensive training required to operate most of this market’s commercial mobile applications (that also come along with standalone hardware units), compared to GIS Pro that comes as easy as it gets.

The latest version of GIS Pro was released on Oct. 17 in the iTunes app store and you can purchase it here.

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