About the founder

Built by a field mapper, for field mappers.

My name is Michael McDermott. I have more than 12 years of GIS and remote sensing experience and more than 8 years of in-the-field archaeology experience. I built Ology because I kept running into the same problem: the people doing archaeology, biology, geology, and environmental fieldwork need more than a simple map app.

Why Ology exists

Over the years I have made archaeological maps, biological maps, report figures, field maps, lidar visualizations, terrain models, site records, environmental layers, and offline field packages. I have also tried many of the available mapping apps and field collection tools.

Each app had something useful, but none of them felt like the complete field tool needed by the “ology” world: archaeology, biology, geology, and the related GIS and remote sensing work that supports those fields.

The field problem

  • One app for map viewing, another for GPS, another for photos, another for forms, another for lidar, and another for export.
  • Offline maps that are hard to prepare or do not include the right reference layers.
  • Field observations that lose scientific context once they become simple points on a map.
  • Terrain and lidar data that are powerful in the office but difficult to use in the field.
  • Sensitive archaeological data that need careful handling and better field review workflows.

The Ology approach

A practical app for scientific fieldwork.

Ology is meant to bring together the things I kept needing on projects: offline basemaps, GeoPDFs, KML/KMZ/GeoJSON, field templates, DPR forms, GNSS tools, lidar terrain visualization, iPhone LiDAR scanning, public agency layers, geology, parcels, PLSS, project packages, and clean export options.

GIS

GIS and remote sensing

Built around real GIS workflows: coordinate formats, measurement units, imported layers, terrain models, online downloads, offline basemaps, and GIS exports.

ARC

Archaeology

Supports site recording, feature templates, transects, DPR 523 forms, lidar terrain views, photo documentation, and field review.

BIO

Biology and environment

Designed for habitat, species, wetland, vegetation, parcel, access, and environmental mapping workflows that often overlap with archaeology and geology.

Mission

Make field mapping easier, cleaner, and more useful.

Ology is basically the app I wished existed after years of building project maps and trying to make different tools work together. The goal is a single field platform that understands how archaeology, biology, geology, GIS, and lidar actually overlap on real projects.

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