SaGISC: A Geo-Collaborative System

The production of geological mapping by conventional processes is a complex work of data gathering and integration, along with expert and team analysis. This process is very time consuming, since it implies several expeditions to the study location. In the organization studied by this paper, this process can take several years to be completed. The objective of this project is to build a remote collaborative system that supports information sharing by the teams that participate in geological data gathering. The developed system integrates several tools for information sharing and geological/topographical data referencing, as well as support to group discussion and decision. The integration of these tools makes up a geo-collaborative system. The development of this system was done in the context of the Portuguese Geological and Mining Institute (IGM). The evaluation of the prototype by 30 experts from IGM revealed that the proposed goals were accomplished: the system was considered better than the conventional approach.