Sunday, July 22, 2007

Implementing Web GIS - GODCHA approach

Web GIS is a delicate area between GIS and web development.
GODCHA will be having both GIS expert and web development programmers.
- is a service setup than a GIS technology company.
- is addressing GIS to non technical, end user customers.

GODCHA platform is stressing on "simplicity, structure and collaboration"
- is promoting wiki style data collection and collaboration approach. - refer Geowiki project and Wikimapia - wiki is a collaborative website that is contributed and edited by everybody. Wiki means fast in Hawaiian language, is a quick way for information collaboration. Wiki promotes virtual common platform (online community) and eventually motivate each of the member with common interest in contributing toward inputting and editing data which normally expensive to do in a commercial ways. Among local successful online community portal is Malsingmap, with more than 200 active members nationwide, MalsingMap motivate each member to contribute toward updating Malaysia and Singapore street and routing maps. Malsingmap is now considered as one of the complete online street routable references. The same effort will take years and million ringgit for typical mapping company to complete. (malsingmap is a forum not wiki architecture portal)

GIS as a complete package, - 3 main areas platform, which is i) engine, a gis software, web development tools and database. ii) a based contents, fixed spartial data, images (mapping, satellite images, demographic and economy zoning data) iii) client data hosting services (option). In future GODCHA will provide clients API to interface with the platform.
GODCHA research team will continue to update relevance data layers as a based layer.
In a way subscriber will not have to own based data but only responsible to their personal dynamic spatial data.

Architecture

Following is an overview OpenGIS Consortium (OGIS) Web Mapping Testbed system flow within the testbed:-





More information regarding OpenGIS implementation is at GISdevelopment.net.

WebGIS Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is as follow:-



Overview of GODCHA sys architecture:-




GODCHA is evaluating GIS engine, between enterprise and open source.

GODCHA showcase (beta) overall system flow:-




Work Around Google Maps
Google maps create big impact in public awareness or understanding about geo information and GIS. It is not just awesome satellite images but most importantly demand for GIS has been drastically increased in recent years. Google or Google Map will still create less in pact in term of business engagement in Asian region, this is due to the fact that the concentration is still very much in North America, Europe and Australia. These is because Google still lacking data in many part of the world and the opportunities are still very much concentrated at or near their origin. Nevertheless, Google deliver the most innovative online mapping and GIS form application on the web, and by monitoring it development will help GODCHA works around what Google is missing and help in offering best solution to GODCHA focus groups.


Three (3) areas that Google is missing are:
i) Data structure
ii) Local contents & support - this is important as enterprise and Goverment a like perceive GIS data are sacret to their organization.
iii) Formal structure collaboration tools

One who browse on Google map will admit far better experience in interface and speed. Google massive infrastructure (server cluster etc) give them great advantage to the rest of online GIS services. (high note on hosting-bandwidth and database design)

There are 3 main modules under GODCHA showcase development:

i) User registration - from registration, profiling (personalization) and verification
ii) GODCHA GIS engine (functionality and layers control) - GODCHA is benchmarking google map in process flow and UI. Among important features are fully web browser access with image in tile,
iii) Collaboration tools







No comments: