[Geomoose-users] Geomoose 2 and custom footer data readouts

[Johan Forsman]

Hello All:

I have an idea to improve our mapserver product, and I come to you asking for help formulating an approach to realizing it.

What I want to attempt is a seamless, continuous readout of elevation data in the Geomoose footer, next to the coordinate-display and scale-jumper features.

I have access to elevation data in the form of USGS DEM rasters, either from 1:24000 quads or from a much denser (and far larger) LIDAR dataset. The quad DEM dataset consists of just under 1000 quads, in what appears to be 16-bit signed integer format, each file with a unique name equal to the USGS quad code. Files appear to be 1-2 megs in size on disk.

The LIDAR dataset appears to use a 32-bit float format, there are over 3500 individual files with unique names that do not correspond directly to the USGS quarter-quad code (but I can possibly generate a lookup table for the translation). Alternatively the LIDAR data is available as CSV format. Files are quite large, 10-12 megs for the rasters and 150 megs for the CSVs. Each.

I am not (yet) interested in displaying the data as an image, only returning the point values at any given location in the footer, and also in the results header when a user clicks on a spot with the identify tool.

How should I (can I? do I need to?) approach crafting a mapserver file that points to 3500+ individual rasters?

Where is the integration point with the footer in Geomoose2? Does the function currently exists to return the type of data I want to display?

Am I thinking all wrong about this? This is very likely.

Should I just forget about the whole thing? Can it even be done?

Please opine at will on this subject.

Thanks!
/Johan.

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Johan Forsman
Geologist
Safe Drinking Water Program
Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals
Office of Public Health
Telephone: 225.342.7309
Telefax: 225.342.7303