Monday, March 3, 2008

Webmapping: GIS on the internet












Spatial Worlds website
Picture descriptions:
Left image: Train travel, German style. The German inter-city Ice-sprinter extra fast trains.
Right image: English countryside around Cumbria.

Webmapping: free GIS interfaces on the internet
There are thousands of GIS interfaces available free on the internet. These interfaces often referred to as interactive maps or webmapping are a great way to start using GIS in the classroom without buying any GIS software. The site below lists a wide range of webmapping sites using ESRI based GIS software. They give an excellent idea of the application of GIS in government and industry whilst providing some potential learning activities for the geography classroom.

http://www.geocomm.com/channel/webmap/links/esri.html

Other webmapping sites are:

National Soil Resource Institute
This website is a great resource to use when studying soils. The interactive map of UK soils and associated topographic maps provide plenty of practical examples of the relationship between soils and location.

http://www.landis.org.uk/soilscapes/

From the USGS and Smithsonian
This dynamic planet resource provides an interactive map of the earth showing plate boundaries with a GIS interface (called the interactive map) to add and change the layers displayed. This is a great resource for natural hazards topics. Also have a look at the interactive map for the Arctic and Antarctic via the home page.

The home page at:
http://mineralsciences.si.edu/tdpmap/

The dynamic viewer at:
http://baird.si.edu/minsci/tdpmap/viewer.htm

uDIG GIS
This sites provides a desktop Internet GIS for Apple and PC. A free user friendly Internet GIS is available to be downloaded from teh site at http://udig.refractions.net/

US Census Bureau
The US Census is also a great source of webmapping facilities and resources. If you are interested in doing any geography related to the US, then this site is incredibly rich in data. Go to the following links to access free data and mapping applications

Cartographic boundaries: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/index.html
On-line mapping: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/maps/CP_OnLineMapping.htm
Landview: A Viewer for the Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.census.gov/geo/landview/

Free GIS sites

Open license GIS software
http://grass.itc.it/
Genesis 2: GIS software
http://geomantics.org/
Map Filter: An image processing program to use with Genesis 2
http://geomantics.com/
Geomatica FreeView
http://www.pcigeomatics.com/
Flowmap: A spatial analyst tool to display and analysis linear data.
http://flowmap.geog.uu.nl/
GPS utility: For uploading and manipulating GPS data: http://www.gpsu.co.uk/
GPS tracker
http://www.gpstm.com/
Spatial data site: The Office of Spatial Data Management (OSDM)at http://www.osdm.gov.au/is charged with implementing the Australian Government Policy on Spatial Data Access and Pricing.
AvisMap GIS Viewer - Free AvisMap GIS Technologies is a leading GIS company in Asia, specializing in the development of GIS software. http://www.avismap.com/
3map is a Free Software project being built with the support of the Telstra Broadband Fund that provides the client and server capabilities to deliver the Web Augmented Virtual Earth.
http://www.ping.com.au/staticpages/index.php?page=20041005102908338
AGIS for Windows includes a tutorial to help you with making your own map displays has also been prepared. This is contained in an installation file called http://www.agismap.com/download.html
Chameleon is a distributed, highly configurable, environment for developing Web Mapping applications. Chameleon is OpenSource, this means that you can use it freely for your own applications, and that you also have access to the source code. http://chameleon.maptools.org/index.phtml
GIS ObjectLand is a universal Geographic Information System for Windows. Free non-commercial license.
http://www.gis-objectland.com/
MapEdit, a low cost solution (free to educational and non-profit organizations) for making image maps come alive. Simple image maps and html still outshine many mapservers. http://www.boutell.com/mapedit/
MapServer is an open source development environment for building spatially-enabled web mapping applications and services. It is fast, flexible, reliable and can be integratated into just about any GIS environment. http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/
MapWindow - Uses most standard GIS data formats including shapefiles (.shp) and ASCII grid files (.asc). Data in these formats can be downloaded from many Internet sites including GIS Data Depot, USEPA, USGS and many others. MapWindow can also handle georeferenced GIF, and BMP image files. http://www.mapwindow.org/
OpenLayers makes it easy to put a dynamic map in any web page. It can display map tiles and markers loaded from any source. MetaCarta developed the initial version of OpenLayers and gave it to the public to further the use of geographic information of all kinds. OpenLayers is completely free, Open Source JavaScript, released under a BSD-style License. http://www.openlayers.org/
Orbit Spatial Technologies has two free products -- a GIS viewer, Orbit Explorer, and a GIS server system, EOS Lite.
http://www.orbitgis.com/
Spatial Console 1.2.1 imports shapefiles to Oracle Spatial and Locator and exports to several different formats. It also enables viewing and validation of Oracle Spatial and Locator data.
http://www.geometryit.com/download/
SPRING is a state-of-the-art GIS and remote sensing image processing system with an object-oriented data model which provides for the integration of raster and vector data representations in a single environment. http://www.dpi.inpe.br/spring/english/

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