Author(s)

Mengesha Endalew¹, Wobetu Shiferaw², Abinet Kindie³

¹Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, School of Civil and Water Resource Engineering, Institute of Technology, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia.
²Software Engineering, School of Computing, Institute of Technology, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia.
³Information Technology School of Computing, Bahirdar University, Bahirdar, Ethiopia.

Ecotourism is a sustainable, green and smokeless industry of the society by providing alternative source to the livelihood and local community, in order to re-naturalize the environment to bring the man closer to the natural environment. The use of web application has changed the way tourists gather information about tourist attraction spots of the research area. The aim of the study is to assess and identify ecotourism attraction sites of Chokie Mountain watersheds for touristic activities to develop a web-based GIS mapping portal for the improvement of nature-based ecotourism activities. The web-based GIS portal for Web Mapping Application is available for the user with the skills necessary to create standard web mapping services. We have implemented web mapping services based on formal cartographic visualization rules in the open source QGIS software and threejs JavaScript plugin. Threejs plugin is used for 3D visualization, interaction and export terrain data, map canvas image and vector data to HTML page and JS. The result of web-based GIS portal supports spatial and non-spatial database of tourist attraction and tourist service data with attractive user interface.

Ecotourism, Chokie Mountain Watersheds, Spatial Mapping, Qgis, Open Source Software, Qgis2threejs Plugins

Endalew, M. , Shiferaw, W. and Kindie, A. (2019) Development of Web Mapping Application for Spatial Ecotourism Information Using QGIS Plugin and Freely Available Web Platforms in North West Highlands of Ethiopia a Case Study: Chokie Mountain Watersheds. Advances in Internet of Things, 9, 50-61. doi: 10.4236/ait.2019.93004.