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Efficient Web-GIS Solution based on Open Source Technologies: Case-Study of Urban Planning and Management of the City of Zagreb, Croatia (4291)

Mario Miler, Drazen Odobasic and Damir Medak (Croatia)
Prof. Damir Medak
Professor
Faculty of Geodesy, University of Zagreb
Kačićeva 26
Zagreb
10000
Croatia
 
Corresponding author Prof. Damir Medak (email: dmedak[at]geoinfo.geof.hr, tel.: +385 1 4639 227)
 

[ abstract ] [ paper ] [ handouts ]

Published on the web 2010-01-14
Received 2009-11-19 / Accepted 2010-01-14
This paper is one of selection of papers published for the FIG Congress 2010 in Sydney, Australia and has undergone the FIG Peer Review Process.

FIG Congress 2010
ISBN 978-87-90907-87-7 ISSN 2308-3441
http://www.fig.net/resources/proceedings/fig_proceedings/fig2010/index.htm

Abstract

This paper describes the progress made by Open Source community in displaying maps on the web by FLOSS AJAX based framework (GeoExt, ExtJS and OpenLayers) and WMS-C (TileCache, Mapnik) and WFS (FeatureServer) server architecture. ExtJS is a popular client-side JavaScript library for building user interfaces. GeoExt adds extensions to ExtJS that bind basic ExtJS components to the spatial features of OpenLayers. TileCache intelligently store and serve map tiles using standard web protocols for requests and responses. Mapnik is an open source mapping toolkit for tile rendering. FeatureServer is an implementation of a RESTful Geographic Feature Service used for serving vector data using standard HTTP methods. Putting maps on the web alone can be very difficult, especially if there is a requirement that those maps are displayed at fast rate. In order to create such a service, specialized software and, what is more important, specialized knowledge is needed. People today got used to web mapping services like Google Maps or Bing Maps which display maps at very high rate and everything that works even little slower that those services is not satisfactory. Advanced users want to display and frequently edit the vector data, which makes the building of the system even more challenging task. We developed an original and efficient solution for visualization of a very large amount of spatial data on the web using Open Source technologies which combine tiled raster maps and vector WFS data. We present a case study of a fast web mapping solution for Urban Planning and Management of the City of Zagreb, Croatia. This approach represents a major step forward in spatial information management and it increased the capacity of small and medium enterprises to develop similar spatially-aware applications without high starting investment.
 
Keywords: Geoinformation/GI; Open Source; spatial information management; web-mapping

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