Benefits of Open Access Approaches to Geospatial

Visualization

Presentation to Seminar on Geospatial Best Practices for Architects, US Department of Transportation, Washington D.C., April 11, 2007.

By: Mark Austin, Natasha Shmunis, Michael Ball, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. E-mail: [austin,kosnat]@isr.umd.edu;

mball@rhsmith.umd.edu

Table of Contents

Open Access: What does it mean? Old approach to data access Advantages of Open Access Using free GIS Open Access/AIXM Architecture Development Challenges

Open Access: What does it mean?

Geospatial data should be available for free for public use

It means this data could be shared with different government agencies, private and public sectors, and other countries.

It means there will be more and more data available for users. And more and more tools to support it

Old Approach to Data Access

Centralized processing of data into meta-data. Often, data and data processing tools are proprietary…

Advantages of Open Access

Free of cost and free to re-use without any restriction

Open data lowers the cost of research and development

Promotes independent research Facilitates the use and development of open

standards and open source technologies

Free GIS resources on the web Almost every state in the

US provides web access to geospatial data

Many universities collaborate with state governments to provide more data and more tools

Map Window GIS is free and open sourceAffiliates include: Idoho State University, Utah State University,and National Oceanic &Atmospheric Administration…

http://www.mapwindow.org/

Using Free GIS

Data Storage: Florida Wetlands WebGIS at the University of Florida

http://srvgis.ifas.ufl.edu/website/wbl2002/viewer.htm

Data Format: Online Interactive Map

Using Free GIS

Data Storage: Harvard Geospatial Library --catalog and web based mapping environment

Data Format: Shapefile format that can be open with free ESRI ARCViewer and other formatshttp://peters.hul.harvard.edu:8080/HGL/jsp/HGL.jsp

Amtrak stations

Using Free GIS Data Storage:

Cheasapeak Bay & Mid Atlantic from Space Project at Townson University http://chesapeake.towson.edu/

Data Format: Shapefile format that can be open with free ESRI ARCViewer

Open Access Visualization

Open Access Architecture for AIXM Visualization

How can you get involved?

We expect to have a web site up-and-running by mid-2007.

Software prototypes will be available for download.

Contact us: Mark Austin (austin@isr.umd.edu), Natasha Shmunis (kosnat@isr.umd.edu), Michael Ball (mball@rhsmith.umd.edu).