3D Web-Mapping
Integrating Marine Data into NASA World Wind
While Google Earth is the best known 3D web-mapping viewer currently in the public domain, there are alternative virtual globe viewers available. In particular, this article focuses on the NASA World Wind viewer, using OGC data-dissemination standards and multi-beam sonar data from the Irish National Seabed Survey to illustrate its potential.
By Declan Dunne and Gerry Sutton, Coastal and Marine Resources Centre, University College Cork, Irel
The creation of a range of innovative GIS tools and systems is enabling the harmonisation and electronic sharing of geospatial data and services across distributed networks. 3D web mapping viewers, such as NASA World Wind, are perhaps some of the most visible of these products.
OGC Standards
Such developments are putting in place some of the key building blocks that underpin the development of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). The Open Geospatial Consortium (81) has published a number of interoperability standards ('OpenGIS' specifications) which are major components of SDI. Important OGC standards include Web Map Service (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS). The WMS standard facilitates web-based dissemination of map imagery, while the WFS and WCS standards facilitate the dissemination of feature and coverage/raster data respectively.
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