32 Advancement of Mobile Geoservices: Potential and Experiences 1. Introduction Mobile information technology opens new perspectives and dimensions for the geoscien- ces, by providing experts in governmental and non-governmental authorities, industry and science with ubiquitous access to geoscientific information. With this new instrument the digital acquisition, management, visualization, and analysis of geodata needed for the under- standing of geoscientific processes and natural disasters can be supported directly in the field. The number of applications is increasing where geoinformation systems (GIS) have to coopera- te with distributed mobile applications and with suitable geodatabase management systems (Balovnev, Bode, Breunig, Cremers, Müller, Pogodaev et al., 2004). The current paradigm shift from the development of monolithic GIS to flexible and mobile accessi- ble geoservices can be recognized in many application fields. New geoservices will provide ubiquitous access to geodata needed in appli- cations such as environmental monitoring and disaster management. Client applications com- municating with geoservices have to efficiently acquire, visualize and manage application-spe- cific 2D and 3D objects and complex spatio- temporal models (Breunig, Cremers, Shumilov & Siebeck, 2003). In this contribution a geoscientific case study dealing with the analysis of land slides shows the potential behind mobile geoservices. Contributions to a distributed software system (Breunig, Malaka, Reinhardt & Wiesel, 2003) consisting of geoservices used by on-site clients for geodata acquisition, viewing, aug- mented reality, and geodata management are presented. The clients communicate over net- work with geodatabase services. Experiences are reported and finally, conclusions and a short outlook are given which address further research in the field of mobile geoservices. 2. Objectives of the project The concrete problem we are referring to in this project is the analysis of land slides at an area near Balingen in south-west Germany (Ruch, 2002). Since several years there are acti- ve creeping movements of the terrain, which may endanger the traffic and people using a nearby road. The geodetic measurements show a gradual sinking of the soil and rocks. A forecast for a slowing down or speeding up of the movements cannot be given. However, mobile data acquisition of the ongoing move- ments and remote data access to a central sta- tion help to watch the situation. The move- ment measurements are done by extensome- Breunig M. (1), Bär W. (1), Thomsen A. (1), Häußler J. (2), Kipfer A. (2), Kandawasvika A. (3), Mäs S. (3), Reinhardt W. (3), Wang F. (3), Brand S. (4), Staub G. (4), Wiesel J. (4) (1) Research Centre for Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing, University of Osnabrück, Kolpingstr. 7, 49069 Osnabrück, Germany; E-Mail: Martin.Breunig@uni-osnabrueck.de (2) European Media Laboratory GmbH, Villa Bosch , Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg 33, 69118 Heidelberg, Germany E-Mail: Jochen.Haeussler@eml.villa-bosch.de (3) GIS Lab, University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39, 85577 Neubiberg, Germany E-Mail: Wolfgang.Reinhardt@UniBW-Muenchen.de (4) Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (IPF), University of Karlsruhe, Englerstr. 7, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany, E-Mail: Joachim.Wiesel@ipf.uni-karlsruhe.de