Taiwan Abstracts

ChinaGis?

The project ChinaGIS implements a prototype web-interface of a user-friendly Geo-Information-System. Its objectives are the intuitive handling, analysis and visualization of historical data with spatially related content. The developer-group supports the Open-Access policy of the Max-Planck-Society. The system enables the user to publish its data in interactive maps. Furthermore the system will be implemented on open-source software only. While the first version still relies on the GoogleMapsAPI as map renderer, the next version will implement a full open-source solution for rendering maps as well and thereby will become independent on future marketing decisions of Google. While the recent version provides access to the system only by a single frontend, the next version will furthermore implement a RESTful API. This API will allow the user to design its own user interface as a website, an applet or a application. Besides data supplied by the user and data already stored in the systems database, the system will also access various alternative geo-data-sources as well as context relevant data sources like digital libraries. The user will then be able to create links from an interactive map into a digital text document, but also the other way around.