Visualization

Coping with INSPIRE view services – A FOSS4G compliancy comparison

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Tom Ellett von Brasch, statens kartverk

The INSPIRE roadmap states that compliant view services must be operational by 9th November 2011, over a year before download services. Because of this, how the different software solve the current view service issues may well have a large bearing on which software is adopted by NMCA̢۪s and other organizations affected by INSPIRE. Mainstream map servers such as Mapserver, Geoserver and Deegree are now in a race to see who can demonstrate the ability to provide INSPIRE compliant view services whilst fitting comfortably into adjusted data management systems.

Many best practice projects such as Esdin and Euradin have concentrated on download services so it is only now that members are beginning to think about view services. That has also been reflected by the main players in the FOSS field only recently beginning work on enabling their respective software to serve INSPIRE compliant WMS. Indeed at the time of writing only Deegree3 claims to be able to serve fully compliant services.

This presentation will compare the very different solutions offered by Mapserver, Geoserver and Deegree to the varied issues associated with INSPIRE view services. Other software will be considered if they demonstrate INSPIRE compliancy development work before September. Each software is built, maintained and developed using a different model, therefore each software̢۪s response to issues such as multi-geometry layers, extended service metadata and multilingualism will themselves be diverse.

A service created using each of the software will be looked at and INSPIRE compliancy analyzed through comparison with the ‘Technical Guidance for the implementation of INSPIRE view services’ document. Results will be considered primarily with regards mandatory requirements, but important optional requirements will also be taken into account.

Speaker Bio: 

Received a Masters in GIS at Portsmouth University in 2003 before working in Local Government. In 2008 started working for Streetmap.co.uk as their chief mapping officer before moving to Statens kartverk (Norwegian National Mapping Authority) in 2009. Have been involved with several European projects including Esdin and am now working on INSPIRE compliancy for Norwegian view services.

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Spatial Data Access Tool: Enabling Visualization of and Access to Geospatial Data using OGC Standards and Open Source Software

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Yaxing Wei, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Suresh SanthanaVannan

The Spatial Data Access Tool (SDAT, http://webmap.ornl.gov/wcsdown) developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) and the Modeling and Synthesis Thematic Data Center (MAST-DC), both NASA-funded projects, provides visualization and access to a variety of biophysical, vegetation, elevation, ecosystem, climate, soil, and model data sets using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services and open source software.

The SDAT is built on a 3-tier architecture: data, logic, and presentation tiers. The data tier includes PostgreSQL-based ArcSDE spatial databases and regular file systems storing geospatial data in non-proprietary file formats, including GeoTIFF and netCDF. The backbone of the logic tier is a cluster of OGC Web Map Services (WMS) and Web Coverage Services (WCS), which provide on-demand visualization and access to geospatial data stored in the data tier in different spatial/temporal extent, projection, resolution, and data format. The WMS and WCS are built on top of MapServer and enhanced with automatic mapfile generation to ease the ingest of new data into these services. The main component of the presentation tier is a Web application client that utilizes the services from the logic tier. This Web application provides features that allow users to conveniently search for data, view both dataset-level and granule-level metadata, visualize data, and access data. The presentation tier provides a WMS-based interactive map widget, which is built with OpenLayers that allows users to visualize geospatial data. Another component of the presentation tier is an OGC Keyhole Markup Language (KML) link to visualize geospatial data in Google Earth or any KML-compatible client.

Speaker Bio: 

Dr. Yaxing Wei is currently a post-doctoral research associate in Environmental Sciences Division at ORNL. His research interests include advanced geospatial information management, visualization and delivery; OGC standards and interoperability.

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Open Source LiDAR Visualization Using GRASS GIS

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Shane Grigsby, University of Colorado, University of Santa Barbara

In the summer of 2010, funding was secured for a LiDAR survey of the CU-Boulder campus as part of a solar energy potential and photovoltaic planning study. Following data acquisition, 20 square kilometers were modeled using only open source tools. While Martin Isenburg’s NSF-funded work on LiDAR processing (LAStools) was used to extract and convert data out of the propriety ‘.las’ format, the majority of the processing, visualization and analysis work was done using the Open Source Geospatial Foundation project GRASS GIS. Processing included filtering, raster generation through inverse distance weighting and raster generation using regularized splines with tension. Analysis of insolation was accomplished using the GRASS GIS implementation of the SOLPOS 2.0 (SOLar POSition and intensity) algorithm developed and maintained by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). This raster data was combined with preexisting building footprint vector data from the campus GIS system to facilitate site selection of solar candidates. The end result was modeled for display using the NVIZ modeling and visualization system within GRASS, and was then supplemented with orthophotos for draping and comparison. The data visualizations of campus solar sites take into account day length, position of the sun, seasonal atmospheric effects, orientation and the local shading effects from trees, buildings and other structures.

This paper explores current methods of LiDAR visualization within the GRASS project. A strong focus is placed on the creation and display of three-dimensional information, specifically on the role that three-dimensional modeled data is coming to play in GIS moving forward. Included in this research is a look at the current barriers to publishing three dimensional datasets such as this on the web, and a look at possible solutions and their subsequent challenges.

Speaker Bio: 

Shane Grigsby graduated magna cum laude from the CU-Boulder geography department in May 2011. He is currently a Masters/Ph.D student of geography at UCSB.

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Lidar Data Structures - Octree Vs. Kd Tree

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Michael Considine
Trevor Clarke, Opticks

The Arbitrary Storage Of Lidar Data Can Serve To Obscure The 3d Spatial Information Contained Within The Data. This Presentation Will Compare The Benefits And Deficiencies Of The Octree And The Kd Tree Data Structures Both In Visualization Optimizations And Algorithm Data Access In Open Source Opticks. Discussions Will Include Tradeoffs Between Display Optimizations Including Clipping, Panning And Zooming And Algorithm Data Optimizations Including Nearest Neighbor, 3d Plane Fits, Gradient Mapping, Intensity Mapping, Line-Of-Sight Algorithms, And Autonomous Landing Site Determination.

Speaker Bio: 

Michael Considine is a core developer of the open source Opticks project and Ball Aerospace and Technologies

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Mapnik2GeoTools

Session Type: 
Tech Session
Presenter(s): 
Mr David Winslow, OpenGeo
Mrs Alyssa Wright

For years, Mapnik has been the cartographic tool of choice for web designers. Sometimes however a web map requires more than rendered tiles. It requires the power of a complete geospatial service. Wouldn't it be nice to bring Mapnik's design prowess into GeoServer's full-featured, batteries-included management interface and standards-compliant services? Now you can!

In this talk we introduce mapnik2geotools -- a configuration importer from Mapnik to GeoServer. We will sample renderings from Open.Mapquest.com Mapnik styles and data from OpenStreetMap, compare the quality and styling options of Mapnik and GeoServer's rendering engines, and discuss future directions for the toolkit.

Speaker Bio: 

David Winslow is a software developer at OpenGeo working on GeoNode, GeoServer, OpenLayers, and GeoExt as the task demands. Some of his other projects include the GeoServer CSS extension and the Scala variant of GeoScript.

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