The Inte) national At chives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008 
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subordinately constructed on MicroStation V8 system platform. 
Since the function modules of the subsystem can be flexibly 
configured and developed with MDL (MicroStation 
Development Language) and VBA (Visual Basic for 
applications) developing tools of MicroStation V8, the 
developing workload and the time cycle for implementing the 
system have been decreased distinctly; besides, the reliability 
and robustness of the subsystem can be ensured to a large extent. 
Field investigation subsystem: with PDA as the hardware 
platform, the subsystem is developed under the Embedded 
Visual C++ environment (WinCE3.0), and is the combination 
of embedded GIS, mobile communication, GPS and other 
advanced techniques. The main user interface is shown in the 
Figure 3(c). 
3.3 System workflow 
Generally speaking, the technical routine of the system 
Geomapupdate is mainly as follows: 
Scheme configuration: with the scheme configuration tool, 
configure the database file of the update scheme; then generate 
the MicroStation DGN seed file, in other words, set up the 
indoor update environment, according to the configured scheme. 
Multi-source information integration: this is finished 
with the data preparation subsystem, at first establish the project 
of map sheet with the corresponding scale; and then data 
preparation and integration work including data importation, 
format transformation, block management, data fusion and 
registration, etc. is carried out until an uniform framework of 
multi-source datasets is constructed; finally, link the update 
scheme with the current project. 
Perform the indoor pre-update: in the MicroStation- 
based indoor update subsystem, firstly reorganize the integrated 
DLG data of the current project into the DGN working file, 
according to the linked scheme. Then pre-update the DLG data 
in the 2-D image-interpretation-based updating environment 
(Figure 3 (bl)), or alternatively in the stereoscopic 
measurement environment (Figure 3 (b2)). 
Integration work of indoor update and field 
investigation, data refinement and quality check: as the 
expenditure of the in-field operation is relatively higher, it is 
uneconomical to completely finish the data refinement and 
quality check work in the field but after the field investigation 
instead. 
Product generation and submission: transfer the DGN 
working file to the objective GIS format (such as ERSI 
Geodatabase) according to the production submission command. 
3.4 System characteristics 
In summary, the system Geomapupdate is characterized with 
the following features: 
1) The system is successful in handling the CAD/GIS 
interoperability, where the indoor update subsystem based on 
MicroStation perfectly realizes the seamless integration of CAD 
and GIS for data collection, editing, quality control, check and 
data output. 
2) It is flexible to customize modules for update according to 
specific user requirement, based on the powerful secondary 
developing capabilities of MicroStation, as well as techniques 
of Component Object Model (COM) and other ActiveX 
controls. 
3) It is a portable, applicable and cheap system to carry out the 
integrative mode of indoor work and the field work, from both 
the hardware design and the software design aspects. 
4) The system integrates modules for photogrammetric data 
process with GIS for DLG n DEM > DOM and 3D Model 
collection and update, able to meet the various requirements of 
data collection and update as soon as possible. 
5) The system accomplishes data collection and update with the 
process unit of map sheet, which is propitious to keep the data 
integrate and decrease the map joining complexity of the 
adjacent models thus improving the update efficiency. 
4. CONCLUSIONS 
This paper studied on the design aspect of the efficient software 
system for GIS database update based on geospatial images, 
where the operation mode of integration was definitely 
emphasized. As a specific software system for national 1:50000 
GIS database update based on geospatial images, 
Geomapupdate is introduced as a study case in this paper with 
detail. It is an integrated platform for GIS database update, 
achieving the integration of indoor and field work, the 
integration of data collection and editing, the integration of 
quality control and quality check, and the integration of 
database setup, update and mapping. It has improved the 
operational efficiency by 20% with such kind of integration in 
collaboration with the integrated stereo registration and editing 
method provided by full digital stereo photo mapping system. 
Overall, it is a successful study case laying a base to achieve 
rapid updating GIS data. 
However, some issues are still required to be solved or further 
improved for the current updating software system to achieve a 
much more efficient operability, such as how to automatically 
or semi-automatically detect and extract the change information 
from the multi-temporal remote sensing images with less human 
interaction, how to manage the multi-version incrementally 
updated data more regularly, etc. In the future, the system will 
be developed and perfected towards an automation and 
intelligence direction by further exploration. 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
The research described in this paper was funded by China’s 
Key Technologies R&D Program (No. 2006BAB10B01-B) and 
the Youth Fundation Plan of Wuhan, China (No. 
200750731253). 
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