Web GIS in practice IV: publishing your health maps and connecting to remote WMS sources using the Open Source UMN MapServer and DM Solutions MapLab

Maged N Kamel Boulos,Kiyoshi Honda

doi:10.1186/1476-072x-5-6

Maged N Kamel Boulos, Kiyoshi Honda

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-072x-5-6

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Abstract

Open Source Web GIS software systems have reached a stage of maturity, sophistication, robustness and stability, and usability and user friendliness rivalling that of commercial, proprietary GIS and Web GIS server products. The Open Source Web GIS community is also actively embracing OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards, including WMS (Web Map Service). WMS enables the creation of Web maps that have layers coming from multiple different remote servers/sources. In this article we present one easy to implement Web GIS server solution that is based on the Open Source University of Minnesota (UMN) MapServer. By following the accompanying step-by-step tutorial instructions, interested readers running mainstream Microsoft® Windows machines and with no prior technical experience in Web GIS or Internet map servers will be able to publish their own health maps on the Web and add to those maps additional layers retrieved from remote WMS servers. The 'digital Asia' and 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami experiences in using free Open Source Web GIS software are also briefly described.

Highlights

One of the most important powers of GIS is the capability to publish and share geo-spatial information on the Internet among large numbers of people
By following the accompanying step-by-step tutorial instructions, interested readers using mainstream Microsoft® Windows machines and with no prior experience in Web GIS or Internet map servers will be able to publish their own health maps on the Web and add to those maps additional layers retrieved from remote WMS servers
Other easy-to-use Open Source Web GIS installations for Windows based on University of Minnesota (UMN) MapServer These include CartoWeb [41], developed by Camptocamp SA, Switzerland, and the 'One Click Installation CD-ROM' kit of Professor Kiyoshi Honda of AIT, Thailand

Summary

Introduction

One of the most important powers of GIS is the capability to publish and share geo-spatial information on the Internet among large numbers of people. Geo-spatial information includes maps or locations of landmarks/facilities, but multiple attribute data, socioeconomic data, ground photos, aerial photographs, satellite images, etc., which may have static or dynamic characteristics. By sharing this information on the Internet, accessibility, time response, and understandability are drastically improved compared to conventional paper distribution of maps or character based Web systems. Dedicated Web portals like [2,3,4] offer users many Open Source GIS and Web GIS software options to choose from These include Quantum GIS [5], a user friendly Open Source desktop GIS that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows, and the very popular University of Minnesota (UMN) MapServer [6]

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