Create Your Own Google-like Maps

Michael Baker
Intergraph Corporation,Huntsville, AL

Internet GIS
Monday March 5, 2012 - 1:30 to 2:45 pm

Google Maps have had a tremendous impact on the GIS industry. Google Maps is an impressive application and is commonly used here in Hawaii as a supplement to desktop GIS systems. It offers fast, responsive, and nicely rendered maps. It also offers the developer a well-documented and well-understood API. However, most GIS users have made a large investment in data themselves. Wouldn't it be nice to have the same Google Maps functionality but using individualized data instead of Google's? Creating individualized Google-like Maps is not difficult as long as the necessary components are understood. The key is to understand the map stack. There are four major components to the map stack - the browser UI, tile cache, WMS service, and GIS data. In this session, the speaker will begin by with a brief discussion of how Google Maps work and then will examine each component of the map stack.

Open Source Applications in Web Mapping

Abe Coughlin
John Maurer
University of Hawaii/SOEST/PacIOOS

Conference-Related Workshop
Thursday March 8, 2012 - 1:00 to 4:00 pm

Two parallel approaches to sharing and displaying spatial data will be presented. One approach is building your own open-source stack of GIS software using the Postgresql database with the POSTGIS extension, the GIS platform Quantum GIS, the map server Geoserver and the viewer GeoExplorer.

The other approach leverages the Google Maps API via JavaScript programming and may touch upon jQuery, server-side scripting with Python, and Ajax along the way.

This is a conference-related event that HIGICC is helping to publicize. The event is free, but separate registration is required.

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