GIS Access Control

Abstract

A user participatory web-based application allows its users to contribute and share information. Supporting geographical information by such an application has become important. Furthermore, features for content management, web-mapping, and social networking need be integrated with proper access control.

In this project, we describe an implementation of access control for a user participatory web-based GIS application. The application should be able to support groups of users and friends of users so that proper information sharing can occur among group members or friends.

We are now developing a user participatory web-based GIS application that allows its users to find and share information on fishing in Oregon. The application is implemented with Drupal 6.x for content management and with contributed modules for social networking, such as Organic Groups and User Relationships. We also created custom modules to handle new content types that support location-based data. In order to enable access control for contents of custom content types, the custom modules utilize access control mechanisms implemented by the Drupal Core and the modules for social networking.

Publications

Tuan Pham, “Access Control for a User-Participatory Web-Based GIS Application Implemented with Drupal 6.x”, M.S. project report, School of EECS, Oregon State Univ., May, 2009.