Maps and Mash-ups: The National Atlas and Google Earth in a Geodata Infrastructure

Abstract

We argue that the users of these three worlds are becoming more and more similar. Most of them routinely use computer programs to access them. Nowadays, any standard computer connected to the internet is capable of showing the virtual globes, which not long ago would need the performance of high-end professional workstations. It therefore can also easily be used to view atlas information, and cartographers have indeed been making their information available in mass-consumer environments, first as multimedia presentations on CDs, but nowadays mostly as interactive websites. The web is also the main distribution platform for GDIs, and around the world policy makers have been expressing the intention that GDI information should be available and useable for the general public (the INSPIRE initiative (URL6) is a good example of this). Therefore generally available end-user applications and websites that show or consume spatial data out of a GDI will likely be more and more common in the near future. In the paper we describe the three worlds mentioned, specifically in the Dutch context. We introduce Geo-Webservices as the binding technology between them. The RGI-111 project, whose central goal is the integration of the Dutch National Atlas into the Dutch National Geodata Infrastructure, is briefly introduced. Then we describe in some more detail our tests to further integrate these two with the Google Earth virtual globe. We explain how we could not use actual Dutch National GDI data, because at the time these were not available yet in a useable service form. Instead we took data of similar granularity and complexity, namely the Dutch portion of Open Street Map and served them, mimicking the foreseen Dutch GDI set up. We explain the architecture, using Geoserver to serve the data from a PostGIS spatial database through Network Links and KML to Google Earth. The technical as well as the cartographic optimisations we employed are presented, as well as a discussion of the results.

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