Bell, P, Shelley, W, Smith, R S, and Tomas, R. 2014. Reusable tools for smartphone apps: innovative activities in the European geological sector. British Geological Survey, OR/14/073.
It was apparent from the survey that many organisations were not involved in app development. Only 18 out of the 33 EuroGeoSurvey members answered the survey and it could be concluded that a good percentage of the abstainers are not engaged in app development activities. Of the 18 that replied, 5 stated that they were not developing apps. We wanted to understand what the European geological surveys felt were the barriers to app development, with Figure 20 summarising the responses.
Figure 20 Barriers to app development.
The need to develop apps for multiple platforms was the most commonly expression barrier, along with limited support for reusable solutions across communities and a lack of reusable semantic vocabularies. Other observed barriers included the financial crisis of recent years and a lack of relevant use cases or organisational interest to engage in such activities. It is hoped that solutions for some of these barriers can come out of this survey.
