Categories
General GIS GIS in Computer Science Slideshow

GPS vs. Smartphone positional accuracy

Joseph Kerski, part of Esri’s education team had some interesting blog posts last week comparing the accuracy of GPS units to his smartphone and implications that might have for using the SmartPhone for academic purposes

Recently I wrote about techniques to use photographs taken on a SmartPhone as hyperlinks to locations where you have collected field data using ArcGIS Online as your mapping platform. These photographs are geotagged with a latitude-longitude coordinate recorded at the time and location that the photograph is taken. But how accurate are those coordinates, and how do they compare to the accuracy of locations recorded by a GPS receiver? In other words, do I really need my GPS receiver any longer, since modern SmartPhones can capture positions using an embedded GPS chip and even supplement the GPS position by triangulating off cell phone towers?

Click here for part 1 of the blog post.

Click here for part 2 of the blog post.

By Janine Glathar

Janine Glathar joined the Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship team in 2009 to fill the newly-created role of GIS Specialist at Bucknell. She has worked in the field of geospatial technologies for more than 15 years as research specialist, technical analyst and software trainer. Prior to joining L&IT at Bucknell, Janine spent seven years doing applied GIS research in Philadelphia’s non-profit social services sector as the GIS Senior Analyst for Philadelphia Safe & Sound and the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition. Before transitioning to the social services research world, Janine worked for the GIS software company ESRI as a trainer and education/non-profit coordinator. She earned a B.A. in European History and Russian Language/Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. If you ask Janine where she’s from, she’ll tell you she’s a Navy brat and will probably offer to show you a map of all of the various places she’s lived over the years.

Areas of expertise:
ArcGIS, Digital Pedagogy, Digital Scholarship, GIS, Google Earth, Spatial Thinking