A Web-Based geographical information system prototype on Portuguese traditional food products

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies

Portuguese traditional food products use certification labels from EU quality schemes to distinguish from other food products. With the number of traditional food products increasing every year, how to manage the information more efficiently and how to spread the information to the public more clearly and interactively become the challenges. Considering the geographic distribution is one of the key features of the traditional food products, the web-based GIS is a potential system to manage and share the information. In this thesis, the prototype of web-based GIS is designed as three tiered software architecture comprising of web application, web service and spatial database. The prototype provides the possibility to integrate with the information from other sources. For the information managers, the prototype takes advantage of the web, open specifications and open source software. Therefore, it minimizes the barrier of the migration from original information system, and the information management is easy to be done in the web browser. For the public, the web map is easy to use and user-friendly. In the end, the potential improvement in the management web interface is discussed, and the further development such as introducing more roles into the system and having the usability test are pointed out.