Elsevier

Environmental Modelling & Software

Volume 62, December 2014, Pages 210-220
Environmental Modelling & Software

An open source Java web application to build self-contained web GIS sites

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2014.08.029Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Open Source Java application that builds Web GIS interfaces from XML files.

  • Capable of displaying 4D data, stored as NetCDF files, from ncWMS servers.

  • Important features are: animations, vertical profiles, and vertical transects.

  • Successfully used to display oceanographic data obtained from the HYCOM model.

Abstract

This work describes OWGIS, an open source Java web application that creates Web GIS sites by automatically writing HTML and JavaScript code. OWGIS is configured by XML files that define which layers (geographic datasets) will be displayed on the websites. This project uses several Open Geospatial Consortium standards to request data from typical map servers, such as GeoServer, and is also able to request data from ncWMS servers. The latter allows for the displaying of 4D data stored using the NetCDF file format (widely used for storing environmental model datasets). Some of the features available on the sites built with OWGIS are: multiple languages, animations, vertical profiles and vertical transects, color palettes, color ranges, and the ability to download data. OWGIS main users are scientists, such as oceanographers or climate scientists, who store their data in NetCDF files and want to analyze, visualize, share, or compare their data using a website.

Section snippets

Software availability

OWGIS is free and it can be downloaded as a Web application Archive (WAR file) from http://owgis.org/. This WAR file contains the stable version of OWGIS and can be deployed in any servlet container, like Apache Tomcat. The source code of OWGIS is maintained at GitHub and it can be downloaded by enthusiastic users and developers from https://github.com/olmozavala/OWGIS.git.

Architecture

Like other Java web applications, OWGIS can be contained in a web archive (WAR) file that can be deployed in any servlet container, such as Apache Tomcat. Similar to a common web application, OWGIS creates web content, JavaScript, and HTML; however with OWGIS, the final websites are self-contained Web GIS sites. The JavaScript code generated by OWGIS uses OpenLayers (http://openlayers.org/), an open source library for creating dynamic maps. OWGIS also creates custom JavaScript code for

Configuration

OWGIS sites are configured by two types of files: Java properties file and XML files. There is only one Java properties file for each OWGIS site and it is used to define general display options of the Web GIS interface, such as setting the default center of the map. The Java properties file is normally modified just once for each OWGIS site. The XML files are used to configure the layers that will be displayed on the map as well as the texts of the menus to be used in the interface. XML files

Features

The features available through OWGIS depend on the type of layer. In this case, the division of layers is different from the categories explained in Section 2. Here, the types of layers are divided into: vector layers, raster layers from GeoTIFF files (GeoTIFF layers), and raster layers served through ncWMS servers (ncWMS layers). This division is necessary because each type of layer has its own characteristics. For example, it is not possible to create vertical profiles from vector layers only

Environmental modeling case study

This Section describes a successful example where OWGIS was used to build a self-contained Web GIS site that displays environmental data from an operational ocean model system. The Web GIS site, available at http://viewer.coaps.fsu.edu/DeepCProject/mapviewer, was built for the Deep-C Consortium at the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS), Florida State University (FSU). The Deep-C Consortium is a long-term, interdisciplinary study of deep sea to coast connectivity in the

Discussion and conclusion

OWGIS is the first open source software that can build Web GIS sites that display 2D, 3D, and 4D data served from distinct map servers that can be located anywhere. The main features OWGIS provides in the interfaces it builds are: multiple languages; animations; vertical profiles and vertical transects; color palettes; and the ability to download data. All these features are created automatically depending on the type of data and without any additional web programming.

In the introduction, OWGIS

Acknowledgments

This project was made possible in part by a grant from BP/The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to the Deep-C Consortium, and in part by normal funding through the UNAM. The present work benefited from the input of Ossian Foley, Meredith Field, and Rosario Romero who provided valuable comments on the writing of this paper.

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