[Freegis-list] Re: Looking for software to display gis street data and orthophotos

[Scott Davis]

Philipp,

If you are looking for a web-based, server-side
solution that can run in a browser, I would recommend
researching the OGC interfaces (Open Geospatial
Consortium -- http://www.opengis.org). They are an
open standards body that promote vendor-neutral,
industry standard GIS interfaces. The OGC interfaces
provide web services for GIS data. There are a number
of implementations out there, both commercial and
free/open source (see
http://www.opengeospatial.org/resources/?page=products).

A WFS (Web Feature Service) is used to serve up your
vector layers. A WMS (Web Map Service) has the ability
to serve up your raster layers and overlay the vector
layers. Both are OGC standards.

A very strong/mature OSS solution is MapServer
(http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/). It runs as a CGI
script.

A newer player is GeoServer
(http://geoserver.sourceforge.net). It is implemented
in Java. It currently doesn't support raster output
(orthos, etc), but is a nice solution if you are
comfortable developing in Java.

A good directory of free GIS applications is
http://www.freegis.org/.

As far as free GIS data goes, you are on a bit of a
scavenger hunt there. US vector data is reasonably
easy to get. Try:
US Census -- http://www.census.gov/geo/www/index.html
USGS -- http://nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html

For state/local data, U of Arkansas has compiled a
nice list: http://libinfo.uark.edu/GIS/us.asp

For raster data (again, US only), try
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/. A good google term
for finding imagery is DOQ (Digital Ortho Quadrangle).
It is a standard USGS imagery product that is usually
free to download (although there are many commercial
vendors who will sell it to you as well...)

I haven't found great sources of international/non-US
data, especially imagery. You can find some basic
int'l boundary files at
http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.search.

At the risk of sounding like a shameless plug, I am
working on a book entitled Pragmatic GIS that should
be out by midyear. If you can wait until then, it will
go into much greater detail and give you hands-on
examples of how to work with free/oss GIS
applications, the OGC interfaces, and so on.

Hope this helps,
Scott Davis


> Subject: [Freegis-list] Looking for software to
display gis street data and orthophotos
> Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:38:45 +0100 (CET)
> To: freegis-list at intevation.de
> From: "Scalar" <scalar at c-a.at>
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am looking for a software that can display display
> gis (street, maybe
> elevation...) data and orthophotos at the same time
> and can layer gis data
> on top of the orthophotos. It should be a software
> that runs on a server
> and can be viewed with a normal browser.
> 
> Till now I found a few packages...but I am new to
> the field and I am cant
> really tell which one is better.
> 
> Is there a software where one can dynamically add
> points to the maps
> through a browser interface?
> 
> One more question: How much free GIS data is there?
> i read something about
> freegis data on a webpage, but to me it seems very
> expensive to generate
> the data so I was not sure.
> 
> I am sorry if I am asking stupid questions, but I am
> new to the field and
> esp. the open source approach interests me very
> much.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Philipp
> ---------------------------------
> Philipp Wassibauer
> 
> initiator of the following projects:
> Causal Agency (www.c-a.at)
> Schmiede Hallein (www.schmiede.c-a.at)
> TheFutureKitchen(www.TheFutureKitchen.net)
> 


=====
Scott Davis
scottdavis99 at yahoo.com



		
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