[mapserver-users] MapServer / OpenLayers application launched

[Richard Marsden]

(sorry for the cross-posting to the openlayers and mapserver listserver 
- I believe this is relevant to both)

Thank you for helping with my beginners questions. I now have both 
MapServer and OpenLayers working for the maps on the 
http://www.ecomapcostarica.com website.
This website documents an ecological study of a rain forest 
reforestation site in Costa Rica. University of Dallas students will be 
performing the field work as a part of their Field Ecology class. Their 
class started today and they have already posted their first blog comments.

We fly on Sunday, and will be 'in the field' for about a week. We shall 
have the students blogging, as well as live map updates, and the posting 
of new panoramic photos as we build them (yes we have internet access in 
the rain forest!).  So feel free to bookmark the site and take a look 
over the next two weeks.

For the map side of things, we quickly realised that Google Maps and 
Virtual Earth simply did not have the required level of detail for Costa 
Rica, so I had to create my own mapping application. I chose MapServer 
to serve the maps, but quickly discovered OpenLayers which greatly 
improved the user experience.

The end result is quite a mix!  There are two main versions:

http://www.ecomapcostarica.com/map/index.shtml
http://www.ecomapcostarica.com/map/index_ve.shtml

For a base map, the first map uses a SHP file of the outline of Costa 
Rica and 1st level admin boundaries delivered by MapServer via WMS. The 
second uses Virtual Earth for a base map.

MapServer WMS also delivers the 'Synthetic Stream' data (also a SHP 
file) and the 'ASTER' satellite image (a GeoTIFF).
OpenLayers brings in two KML layers that have the map data, annotation, 
and icons that we shall be adding to next week. The icons layer also has 
popups (I'm having group all 'clickable' shapes on the icons layers due 
to that bug I asked about last week).

Then, just to liven things up, the survey grid is drawn at run-time by 
Javascript. This grid will have to be relocated on the first day - ie. 
recomputed/etc. So we might as well have the computation on the webpage, 
instead of using Excel/Python/whatever and a load of KML text editing.

Best regards,


Richard
-- 

Richard Marsden
Winwaed Software Technology LLC
http://www.winwaed.com
Tools and Add-ins for MapPoint - http://www.mapping-tools.com