Int. J. Communications, Network and System Sciences, 2010, 3, 402-405
doi:10.4236/ijcns.2010.34051 Published Online April 2010 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ijcns/)
Oilfield GIS Service Based on Mobile Platform
Lingling Guo1, Man Yuan1, Shaobin Hu2
1School of Computer & Information Technology, Daqing Petroleum Institute, Daqing, China
2Key Laboratory of Educational Ministry for Improving Oil and Gas Recovery, Petroleum Engineering Department,
Daqing Petroleum Institute, Daqing, China
Received January 21, 2010; revised February 27, 2010; accepted March 22, 2010
Abstract
With the development of mobile technology, especially the development of 3G and mobile IP, the computa-
tional capacity of handsets is becoming more and more powerful, which provides a new method to solve the
difficulties encountered in real time GIS accessing caused by the characteristics of mobility and remoteness
of fieldwork in oilfield. On the basis of studying in-depth on the technologies of J2ME platform, Mobile
SVG and mobile data transfer, etc., and in accordance with the actual situation of oilfield, the design frame-
work of oilfield mobile GIS service is put forward and the schemes of key technologies are given in this pa-
per, which establishes the technical foundation for the construction of “Digital Oilfield”.
Keywords: J2ME, Mobile Platform, GIS Service, Digital Oilfield
1. Introduction
Oilfields, especially the peripheral oilfields, are generally
located in remote areas and the workplaces scatter widely
and span large regions. The field operations, such as geo-
physical prospecting, drilling, logging, well testing have
the characteristic of strong mobility. In this case, it is dif-
ficult to build wired network. But on the other hand, it is
needed to access and control the oilfield GIS information
real-timely by the “Digital Oilfield”. In such a case, oil-
fields proposed higher requirements on the WWW-based
GIS platform. In recent years, with the development of
mobile communication and mobile computing technolo-
gies, it is possible for the traditional GIS to develop into
mobile GIS [1-3]. The mobile GIS with handsets as the
terminal is becoming a research hotspot in GIS domain.
Value added service of mobile GIS in oilfield is emerging
as the times require, it is meaningful to carry out the re-
search on mobile platform-based oilfield GIS service.
Mobile GIS services are based on the technologies of
Mobile SVG, J2ME platform, etc. SVG, the abbreviation
of scalable vector graphics, is the formal recommendation
standard of internet (W3C), and a language which uses
XML to describe the two-dimensional diagrams [4]. In
order to meet the requirements in wireless domain, the
SVG workgroup of W3C established the specific standard
Mobile SVG for the mobile application domain. For mo-
bile developer, vector graphic has the advantages of small
space usage and nice flexibility, so it is widely used in the
mobile network. An important application of Mobile
SVG is the location-based services, an important part of
which is the handset-based map service, the product of
the combination of the technologies of spatial information,
mobile communication, mobile computing and so on. As
a new emerging service, it has the characteristics of mo-
bility, diversity of handsets, thin client/fat server, and
limited bandwidth. J2ME is the abbreviation of Java 2
Micro Edition released by SUN, is a development plat-
form aiming at the embedded consumption electronic
products, and is a whole collection of technology and
specification [5]. The discussion of this contribution is
how to realize oilfield GIS service on the basis of Mobile
SVG specification and J2ME platform.
Compared with the services provided by sitemap, such
as the well-known Google Map, oilfield GIS service is
committed to different objectives and the user groups are
not the same. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are con-
sumer-centered to a large extent. They take mapping and
geo-spatial visualization as an aspect of the search tech-
nology, trying to achieve the visualization and interrela-
tion of global base map. While the oilfield GIS service is
oilfield oriented. By using the professional data of oilfield,
oilfield GIS services create the contents that can be visu-
alized on the mobile terminal, supporting the professional
and technical personnels to carry out various analyzing
and decision making.

L. L. GUO ET AL. 403
2. Overall Design of Mobile Platform-Based
Oilfield GIS Service
The prototype of the mobile platform-based oilfield GIS
service applies C/S structure. It is divided into three lay-
ers: data layer, middle layer and presentation layer, the
hierarchical structure is showed in Figure 1.
Presentation layer: This layer implements the graphics
user interface, the data representation (map display) and
the simple operations on map (map zoom in or out, etc.)
for various kinds of handset equipments. Because of the
limited process and memory capability, most of the com-
puting work must be implemented at the server end,
while the handset can only implement the visualization
of spatial data and the communication between the user
and server. Due to the limited bandwidth, the SVG file
transferred by the server to the handset can only contain
graphic data. When map service is required by user, it
sends HTTP request to the server, the server responses
the user request and sends the SVG-formatted spatial da-
ta to the client, and then the client handset parses and ge-
nerates the graphic map [6]. If the user needs other in-
formation query or data processing, communication with
the server is required again.
Middle layer: Middle layer is made up by web server.
It requests data from the data layer in accordance with the
user demand, implements necessary information process
and communicates with the client end. Web server ace-
pts the service request sent by the client based on HTTP
protocol, implements the data query in the back-end spa-
tial database, then sends the query results back to the cli-
ent after compression.
Data layer: It is the spatial database on the server end.
It stores various geographic data needed by the mobile
platform-based oilfield GIS services. After development
for scores of years, oilfields have accumulated mass of
data, including raw data in exploration and exploitation,
results of processing and interpretation and information of
surface engineering, etc., which are the basis of the spatial
database. These data are classified into three sorts: basic
geographic information, metadata and oilfield profession-
al data (including gathering and transportation system for
crude and gas, water injection system, water supply sys-
tem, drainage system, road system, power supply system,
corrosion protection and thermal insulation, communica-
tion system, exploration and exploitation related mining
right, reservoir boundary, basin and formation boundary,
ground, fire fighting, sanitation and so on). The structure
diagram of oilfield spatial attribute database is shown in
Figure 2.
3. Key Technologies
The mobile platform-based oilfield GIS service prototype
is made up by two parts: client end handset application
program and Web server program. The handset applica-
tion program mainly implements the interactive graphic
user interface, SVG file parsing and the map display and
operations (map translation, zoom in or out, etc.). The
functions of Web server are mainly to accept the hand-
set’s HTTP service request, implement the data query,
generate and compress the SVG map file, then send the
map data file back to the client handset [7,8]. The struc-
ture of the prototype is shown in Figure 3.
Web server
Mobile program
Spatial Database
Presentation layer
Middle layer
Data layer
Figure 1. Layer structure of mobile platform-based oilfield
GIS service.
Front-end application system
Spatial data management module
SQL Server
Cell Header table
Curve table
Text table
…
Spatial data table
Road information table
Oil well information table
Power information table
…
Attribute data table
ID
Figure 2. Structure of spatial attribute database.
PDA
…
Internet networ
k
Web server
SQL operate
SQL Server
database
Base station
http protocol
http protocol
Cell phone
http protocol
Figure 3. System architecture diagram of the prototype.

404 L. L. GUO ET AL.
3.1. Generation of SVG File at the Server End
At the server end, the file data are written to SVG file in
accordance with the Mobile SVG specification, all the
related geographic information needed in the SVG file are
obtained by querying the spatial database, and these data
are assigned to the corresponding attributes of the ele-
ments in the SVG file.
Based on the characteristics of Mobile SVG, the gro-
und objects can be classified into point entity, linear en-
tity and area entity according to their geometrical shape
[9]. These entities are represented by corresponding
graphic coding in Mobile SVG. In Mobile SVG, basic
graphic elements (rectangular, circle, ellipse, line, folding
line, polygon, etc.) are supported, so as the path. Various
complex graphics can be plotted with path elements.
The data fields of various entity objects in the spatial
database are basically the same, while the types of the
spatial data of the entity objects are different. Thus, the
data query should be implemented in three ways accord-
ing to the entity objects. The queried contents mainly
include ID, name and spatial coordinate data. As for the
attributes, such as color of the entity objects, it can be
acquired by querying the entity description table in the
database. After the correlated data of each entity are ac-
quired, the corresponding group and element can be gen-
erated in accordance with the Mobile SVG normative
standard, and written to the SVG file as the values of the
attributes of various elements, generating the demanded
SVG map file.
3.2. SVG File Compression
Compared with other graphic formats, the SVG technol-
ogy itself has the advantage of small data amount, but for
the bandwidth-limited wireless network, the less the tran-
smitted data amount, the better. As a result, compression
treatment is implemented on the SVG file by using GZIP
format at the server end [10].
3.3. SVG File Parsing at the Client End
At the mobile terminal, the SVGZ file from the server
should be decompressed into SVG file. SVG file is based
on XML. Presently, there are special-handset-aimed X-
ML parsers, such as KXML [11]. Tinyline viewer is a
special browser to browse the SVG file on handsets,
which can be installed on handsets directly. On the other
hand, one can develop the SVG file browser by himself,
too. Due to the limited capacity of Tinyline viewer, a self
developed browser is applied in this prototype [12].
During the process of file parsing, a third party devel-
oped SVG file parsing package, tinyline.zip, is applied.
This parsing package can parse the graphic elements and
their attributes in the Mobile SVG standardaccorded
SVG file. It transforms them into the J2ME graphics and
displays on the handset screen.
3.4. Map Display on Client Handset and Simple
Operations
On the client handset, simple operations on the parsed
SVG file can be implemented by the user, such as map
zoom in or out, translational movement, and so on.
4. Application Example
Through the study on the technologies of J2ME and Mo-
bile SVG, a mobile platform-based oilfield GIS service
prototype was realized by using the geographic informa-
tion data of an oil production plant in Daqing oilfield.
Using this prototype, one can real-timely query the sur-
face engineering map of the plant and carry out simple
operations on it, as shown in Figure 4.
Initial interface Original map
Local amplification Translational movement

L. L. GUO ET AL. 405
Query information Well monthly production
Figure 4. Operation interface of surface engineering map of
oilfield.
5. Conclusions
The design and realization of mobile platform-based oil-
field GIS service prototype are introduced in this contri-
bution. Making use of the characteristics of Mobile SVG
and its advantage in the wireless graphic application, co-
mbining the J2ME development platform, the prototype
organizes and codes the oilfield spatial data, then trans-
mits the file through Web server to the client end to dis-
play. The graphics generated by using the Mobile SVG
technology described in this contribution has the advan-
tages of small size, fast access speed and easily process,
therefore it is the first choice for graphic displaying at
the client end of the mobile platform-based oilfield GIS
service.
The study on the mobile platform-based oilfield GIS
service in this contribution plays the navigation role in
the “Digital Oilfield” based applications, and establishes
the technical foundation for the construction of “Digital
Oilfield” by using the front technology of mobile GIS.
6. Acknowledgment
This work is sponsored by the Supporting Program for
Excellent Youth of Higher Education Institutions of Hei-
longjiang Province of China (1151G002); the Scientific
and Technological project of Heilongjiang Province of
China (2005G3674-00); the Key Scientific and Techno-
logical Project of Daqing City of Chinai（SGG2005011).
7
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