Visualization

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.

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.

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.