Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/50311
How do we make geospatial Web capabilities easier to create, deploy and modify? Connie Gurchiek: For better or worse, neogeography has made a significant impact with the masses in providing widespread access to geospatial mapping and data. Although these types of maps and mashups (usually provided online) are useful to some extent, I believe that there still remains a signifi- cant gap between these types of solutions and those required for traditional business uses, including by transportation agencies. There are specific data, mapping requirements and processes relevant to transportation agencies, such as linear referencing, integration with other geospa- tially enabled business systems and management of historic data, that necessitate use of relatively sophis- ticated technical tools and processes. The challenges to implement these capabilities include how best to design, develop and support these solutions in a seamless manner technically as well as how to ensure organizational feasibility and accep- tance, especially when legacy standards and practices may impede adoption of the solution. Significant cus- tomization efforts should focus on specific business solutions instead of the standard spatial tools that now are "out of the box" for most GIS vendors. Ron Lake: A lot of applications don't require a "full-blown" GIS. This has been clearly shown by the success of Google Earth. At the same time, many of these applications require information models, with location or extent as a property or properties. We can use the facilities of Google Maps, Earth, etc., for a mapping backdrop, but we still need to create the fore- ground objects and their relationships to one another. This is more than one can expect from Google Earth or Maps to provide. Of course, one could use a client framework like Flex or Silverlight and use Google Maps or ArcGIS. Display and manipulation of the map is the easy part. The miss- ing ingredient, however, is the ability to rapidly create and deploy the information model. Here these tools don't help that much, and the user is faced with a rather unpleasant and not-so-minimal development task. I believe that registries can help. They provide enough spatial support to be effective, and make it easy to build and deploy the information model across the Web. For those who like unstructured information, that's readily supported as well. They make good use of existing mapping environments (e.g., Google Earth, ArcGIS), and you will be able to share your information models immediately with colleagues—not just as pic- tures—but in a form that's immediately usable. Walter Scott: The key enabler will be open standards to allow devel- opers to build services into the cloud, and to make these services available to other applications. Think of it as a geospatial eco- system in the cloud. Geospatial cloud computing means putting the computation next to the data. Cloud computing makes it easier to add services for accessing and manipulating the data. Examples today are simple WMS (Web Map Service), WFS (Web Feature Service) and WCS (Web Coverage Service), which allow Web clients to query and receive geographic information in the form of image, vector or coverage data. Mladen Stojic: The key to making geospatial Web capabilities easier to create, deploy and modify really boils down to your choice of tools. It's best to consider tools that are specifically designed to simplify development. For example, ensur- ing compatibility with multiple browsers, including those used on mobile devices, can be a significant task. By selecting tools that bring you closer to browser independence, you're saving yourself some time and effort. It's also best to consider tools that are widely used, so there are plenty of practitioners to choose from within the development talent pool. A new advanced geospatial Web toolkit built on HTML5/CSS3 and Open Web Standards really meets the needs of customers looking for something off-the- shelf as well as developers looking to build more tightly integrated custom solutions. It's rare to see industries converge on technologies so universally, but when you hear about both Microsoft (Silverlight) and Adobe (Flash/ Flex) building products in direct competition with their own proprietary technologies, you need to take notice. The ability to build clients easily for all platforms at once, including mobile, is transformational for the industry. DECEMBER 2O11 / WWW . GEOPLA CE . C O M 25