Attendees of the Rocky Mountain GITA luncheon at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver last Friday were treated to a sneak peak of some of the new functionality of the National Map web viewer. Employees of the National Geospatial Technical Operation Center (NGTOC) and a contractor demonstrated some of the functionality of the new system that is under accelerated development.
The National Map Topo download area.
First on display were the topo maps that will replace the 55,000 paper maps that were a 100-year project. The original maps each took 400 to 500 hours to produce, but with the new automated system, each quad can be completed in an hour. The initial maps in the traditional 7.5 minute quadrangle format include orthoimagery, roads and geographic names. The plan is to add hydrography and contour layers by October 1, when the site becomes more widely promoted.
The new maps are produced in GeoPDF format initially, with plans for a GeoTIFF version in the future. The digital topographic maps are viewable online at this site. Users can choose between an immediate GeoPDF download or can order a printed map for roughly $9 each.
The advantages of the new system that were outlined were:
- instant access online, with complete details that users can print themselves for free
- a choice of georeferencing: Latitude/Longitude, UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator), and MGRS (Military Grid Reference System)
- presented in a Web Mercator projection for mashups with Google Maps and Microsoft’s Bing
- the free TerraGo Desktop toolbar adds interaction and added map functionality (with additional professional products available for purchase from TerraGo to bring GeoPDF content into other software platforms for additional manipulation, such as software from ESRI, ERDAS, Intergraph and BAE Systems).
The National Map Viewer in Google.
Next, we heard about the National Map Viewer and the Map on Demand process flow that will enable more direct access to downloadable data for GIS use. The new viewer is based on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Palantera web mapping viewer, and it will combine what are now separate viewers for imagery and elevation, download of vector files, and national hydrography data.
The combined viewer is much quicker than the previous iteration, and also seamlessly integrated all the data from the previous viewers in one easy viewer. The viewer will allow users to turn layers on and off, and will allow users to draw shapes and color them on the web view.
The ability to extract data takes a leap forward as well, with selection of an area via the drawing of a polygon bounding box. Upon drawing the box, users are shown a dialog box with various setting for the appropriate data download details. There are options for download in various data formats, including GeoPDF, KML, Shape file, or personal geodatabase. There’s also the ability to make dynamic connections to the data by connecting via ArcGIS Server, ArcIMS or WMS.
The Beta for the new MapViewer is expected in September, with the plan to go live in December or January.
