Map Composer
Karel Charvat
Project Manager and Representative of Plan4all in GEO, member of Programm Board of GEO and OGC at Plan4all, chair of Agricuture DWG in OGC
Map composer is providing the necessary functionality for displaying geographic data on a map and then creating a map composition (a thematic map) that can contain several data layers. After the map composition is created, i.e. detailed definition and metadata of each layer of the composition along with the composition itself, it can be saved as a JSON-styled text document. Then, this document can be read and visualized by an HSLayers NG-based web application. So, the main purpose of the application is to share visualized geographic data between users. Map Composer is currently it is able to display map layers that come from the following services/sources: WMS, WFS, WCS, KML, GeoRSS, GML, GeoJSON and SOS. A user can then combine the layers he wishes into a composition that will be saved as an .hsl file (JSON styled text document that contains all necessary definitions and metadata of each layer and composition itself). It is further intended that the user will publish the composition he has created and share it with other users. It can be done in several ways: if user sets composition to “public” it can be viewed by other users of the platform in the Thematic Atlas web-application or the user can use Embed Map utility (feature of Thematic Atlas) to generate link to insert the map window with composition into any web-page (as data object, iframe etc.). In the context of the project the Map Composer is playing very important role as it is allowing thematic map creation. With the help of this application users can overlay data from different sources and visually explore patterns in data and relationships between different data layers. The application is intuitive enough even for users that don’t have strong background in GIS.
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