Web Mapping Earth Systems Data

The Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing (TPAC) is part of the Australian network of advanced computing facilities, with expertise in Earth Systems Science. Much of the data hosted by TPAC can be visualised using custom map systems, however these images could not easily be shared over the web with other partners and organisations.

Insight4 developed a portlet client that can view images from servers that offers the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) standard. The system allows TPAC to provide web based access to its map images of climate and research data.

To further enhance interoperability, Insight4 has commenced work on a wrapper to add WMS capabilities to Live Access Server (LAS), which is the de-facto application for generating maps from Earth -based data.

What is a Web Map Service?

The Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Service (WMS) protocol defines a simple interface for web based mapping applications. Users of the TPAC portal can now access WMS servers around the world as well as exporting their datasets graphically in a standard manner.

Open-source Delivery

The WMS portlet has been developed by Insight4 in partnership with TPAC. This software is freely distributable under the Insight4 Open-Source License.

JSR-168 Compliant

The portlet is JSR-168 compliant and developed using the GridSphere Portal Framework.

Features

Features of the system include:

Supports any WMS 1.1.1 servers

Easy to use interface

Ability to select region of interest by clicking on maps or via coordinates

Export images and legends

Java WMS API

Free Java WMS Library

Insight4 has developed a free WMS library that encapsulates capabilities of WMS servers into objects which can be easily manipulated and queried. This library is also capable generating WMS request strings for retrieving maps. The WMS library is made available to developers who wish to build WMS-related applications.

The client portlet was implemented within the GridSphere portal framework - an open-source framework developed in Java. GridSphere is a leading JSR-168 portal framework which combines features that make it ready-enabled for Grid integration.