A spatially-enabled Internet application to support information … · 2018-11-07 · 1960 the traditional way representing GI was to use paper maps. This form had some advantages

Viðskipta- og raunvísindadeild

Faculty of Business and Science

A spatially-enabled Internet application to support

information access.

Final Year Project

2009

Snorri Guðjón Sigurðsson

A spatially-enabled Internet application to support information access.

Final Report

Snorri Guðjón Sigurðsson

Supervisor: Dr. Andrew Brooks

School of Computing

Faculty of Business and Science

University of Akureyri

Submitted April 2009, in partial fulfilment of

the conditions of the award of the degree BSc.

I hereby declare that this final report is all my own work,

except as indicated in the text:

Signature ______________________

Date 17/4/2009

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Andrew Brooks, of the University of Akureyri, for his

help and guidance during this project. I also would like to thank my wife, Heiða

Guðmundsdóttir, for her love and support.

This is for my son Styrmir Franz Snorrason.

Abstract

This document describes the work on the development of a spatially-enabled

Internet application to support information access about the University of

Akureyri. The system is a interface to a database that holds nodes, ways,

relations and tags. Hopefully this project will be useful to the University of

Akureyri to support information access about the University both for

employees and students.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 4

1.1. Motivation for the work .......................................................................................................... 4

1.2. Introduction to Geographical information systems (GIS) ....................................................... 4

2. Existing systems............................................................................................................................... 7

2.1. Google Earth............................................................................................................................ 8

2.1.1. Google Earth 3D .............................................................................................................. 9

2.2. Google Maps............................................................................................................................ 9

2.3. Google Street View................................................................................................................ 10

2.4. Microsoft Virtual Earth.......................................................................................................... 11

2.5. OpenStreetMap..................................................................................................................... 12

2.6. Quantum GIS ......................................................................................................................... 15

2.7. GIS in Iceland ......................................................................................................................... 15

2.7.1. National Land Survey of Iceland.................................................................................... 15

2.7.2. LUKR .............................................................................................................................. 16

2.7.3. The National Energy Authority ...................................................................................... 16

2.7.4. The National Energy Authority ...................................................................................... 17

2.7.5. National Energy Authority ............................................................................................. 18

2.7.6. University of Iceland Campus Map................................................................................ 18

2.7.7. The town of Akureyri..................................................................................................... 19

2.8. Summary................................................................................................................................ 20

3. System Design ............................................................................................................................... 21

3.1. Proposed system ................................................................................................................... 21

3.2. Changes made to the original design .................................................................................... 22

3.3. Summary................................................................................................................................ 23

4. System Implementation ................................................................................................................ 24

4.1. Technologies.......................................................................................................................... 24

4.1.1. MySQL............................................................................................................................ 24

4.1.2. phpMyAdmin................................................................................................................. 24

4.1.3. Ruby on Rails ................................................................................................................. 25

4.1.4. Fedora 9......................................................................................................................... 25

4.1.5. VMware Workstation .................................................................................................... 25

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4.1.6. Browsers ........................................................................................................................ 25

4.1.7. Osmosis ......................................................................................................................... 25

4.1.8. Osm2pgsql ..................................................................................................................... 25

4.1.9. PostGIS........................................................................................................................... 26

4.1.10. Mapnik........................................................................................................................... 26

4.1.11. OpenLayers.................................................................................................................... 26

4.2. The System ............................................................................................................................ 27

4.2.1. Architecture................................................................................................................... 27

4.2.2. Database........................................................................................................................ 29

4.2.3. The GUI .......................................................................................................................... 30

4.3. Summary................................................................................................................................ 32

5. Evaluation...................................................................................................................................... 33

6. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 34

6.1. Future work ........................................................................................................................... 34

6.1.1. The map in 3-D .............................................................................................................. 34

6.1.2. Adding more information.............................................................................................. 34

6.2. My Work ................................................................................................................................ 35

6.3. Summary................................................................................................................................ 36

Bibliography........................................................................................................................................... 37

Appendix A – Code Listing ..................................................................................................................... 39

Appendix B – Project Plan ..................................................................................................................... 43

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Figure 1 Evolution of Spatial Data Models and Computers (Roger & Luna, 2004)………………………………5 Figure 2 Google Earth – Akureyri………………………………………………………………………………………………………..8 Figure 3 Google Earth 3-D – Eiffel Tower……………………………………………………………………………………………9 Figure 4 Google Maps – London…………………………………………………………………………………………………………9 Figure 5 Google Street View – New York………………………………………………………………………………………….10 Figure 6 Microsoft Virtual Earth – North America…………………………………………………………………………….11 Figure 7 OpenStreetMap – Akureyri…………………………………………………………………………………………………12 Figure 8 OSM components (Wood, 2007)….……………………………………………………………………………..……..13 Figure 9 Quantum GIS ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………15 Figure 10 Map services of the National Land Survey of Iceland ……………………………………………….………15 Figure 11 Borgarvefsjá.….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………16 Figure 12 Gagnavefsjá………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………17 Figure 13 Náttúruvefsjá ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………17 Figure 14 Landgrunnsvefsjá ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..18 Figure 15 University of Iceland Campus Map ……………………………………………………………………………………19 Figure 16 Map viewer from Loftmyndir ehf………………………………………………………………………………………19 Figure 17 Infrapath Akureyri………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…19 Figure 18 Comparison of proprietary and free open source software (Steiniger & Bocher, 2008)…..21 Figure 19 OSM Slippy Map ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….22 Figure 20 Architecture of the system ……………………………………………………………………………………………….27 Figure 21 A tile generated by Mapnik ………………………………………………………………………………………………28 Figure 22 The database ©Milo van der Linden …………………………………………………………………………………29 Figure 23 The GUI of the system ………………………………………………………………………………………………………30 Figure 24 Layer Switcher ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….31 Figure 25 An example of an icon on the map …………………………………………………………………………………..32 Figure 26 OSM in 3-D ©GDI3D ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..34

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1. Introduction

Over the last few years Information and Data exchange services increasingly

comprise mapping services. This has led to a need for spatially enabled Internet

applications that provide fast and timely information services. A vast number of GIS

are available both commercial and open-source. This interim report discusses the

examination of different standalone GIS rendering tools for use in Web and desktop

applications. This interim report is in six key sections and the first discusses the

motivation for the work and gives an introduction to GIS. Section two explores

existing systems, their use and how they have been implemented. Section three

covers the proposed design of the system.

1.1. Motivation for the work

The aim of this project is make use of open-source GIS and Web mapping

software to create a spatially-enabled Internet application to support accessing

information about the University of Akureyri. The use of this software would

supply current and future students of the University with information about the

University and Akureyri. The information should be displayed in a way that would

persuade students who are looking for a University to choose the University of

Akureyri as their University. The information should be internationalized since the

University of Akureyri offers foreign students to study at the University.

1.2. Introduction to Geographical information systems (GIS)

Geographic information is any data, not necessarily a map that can be referenced

to a known point on the face of the Earth. This data can be used in various ways.

A few examples of this could be for example to find out how to get from A to B,

discover what lies between A and B and determine what occurs at A or B. Before

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1960 the traditional way representing GI was to use paper maps. This form had

some advantages like easy storage and retrieval of maps and ease of use but the

disadvantages were many. We live in an age when the usage of geography is

changing. Businesses and government, schools and hospitals, nonprofit

organizations, and others are taking advantage of it of this change. All around the

world, people are working more efficiently because of it this new way of using

geographic information. Information that was limited to spreadsheets and

databases is being unleashed in a new, exciting way—all using geographical

information systems.

Most texts credit the Canadian scientist Roger Tomlinson with creating the first

true GIS in 1964 know as the Canada-GIS (Rogers & Luna, 2004). Tomlinson

was working on simple tasks associated with the Canada Land Inventory. The

tasks proved to be incredibly labor demanding and he saw the opportunity to use

computers to perform these tasks. It was clear that GIS was as a tool that could

replace and to complement traditional means of handling spatial data.

Over the past two decades a vast

amount of electronic resource data

has been made available. This

amount increased even more with

the deployment of the Global

Positioning System, which

provided a low cost alternative for

accurately locating positions on

Earth´s surface, in 1985.

Increased memory and processing power (figure 1) in computers along with the

information revolution brought on by the Internet has been a major boost for GIS.

Until recently most work with spatial data was done with either systems like CAD

which represents vector data with lines and points or DB systems which consists

of text based information. GIS merged CAD systems and DB technologies by

creating a computer-based system to store, analyze, manage and display spatial

and associated tabular data via an “Intelligent” map. Unlike a flat paper map,

Figure 1 Evolution of Spatial Data Models and Computers

(Rogers & Luna, 2004)

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where "what you see is what you get," a GIS can present many layers of different

information.

Companies and even whole Government are increasingly relying on GIS in their

activities. The trend is that GIS is increasingly becoming a general-purpose tool

instead of a domain for specialists. The access to GIS data repositories via the

internet is growing and thereby the number of applications that provide access to

these repositories is increasing. Maps can then be used to find patterns by

looking at the distribution of features on a map instead of just and individual

feature. Quantities can be mapped to find out where highs and lows are for a

specific criterion. There are not only benefits for Companies and Governments in

using GIS. An individual can find where any health clinic in the state is located,

and how best to get there, using a desktop computer and an industry-standard

browser. Multiple databases will be queried, but the user won't have to know what

comes from what. They'll just have data online for quick answers (Page, 2002).

Web GIS has yet at long way to go before achieving its full potential. There is

much competition in the online map space between services like Google Maps,

Microsoft Virtual Erath and Yahoo Maps and this competition has provided users

with rapid innovation and increased coverage service. But there is also a space

for the community to contribute and generate data in projects like

OpenStreetMap.

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2. Existing systems

This section will discuss the existing systems. There are many GIS systems

available both for off-line and on-line use and their number is increasing. The on-

line GIS systems have more or less the same goal that is to provide a kind of

browser for the planet. These systems will be briefly described.

The starting point of this project was an institutional case study about a

collaborative system for environment and tourism information authoring and Web

publishing. This report examined different open source stand-alone GIS with

desktop capabilities like for example GeoVISTA Studio, SharpMap and Quantum

GIS. These GIS where also examined for this project as well as propriety GIS like

ArcGIS. ArcGIS was quickly ruled out since this project does not have any funding

and the source code for ArcGIS is not accessible.

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2.1. Google Earth

Google Earth was released to the public in mid 2006. It can be described as a

virtual globe and it enables users to fly from space to street level views to find

geographical information. Google Earth provides pictures of the surface of the

earth by downloading satellite data from Google´s remote servers. The user has

the ability to zoom in to explore the region in more detail (figure 2). The resolution

differs between regions and is higher in some regions than others. The

information collected in Google Earth is collected over time and is therefore not in

real time. The imagery used is approximately one to three years old (Google, Age

of satellite imagery and data , 2009). The basic features of Google Earth can be

used for getting directions from A to B, searching for local services and interesting

places. Google Earth is currently available under two different licenses: Google

Earth, a free version with limited functionality and Google Earth Pro which is

intended for commercial use (Wikipedia, Google Earth, 2009a).

Figure 2 Google Earth - Akureyri

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2.1.1. Google Earth 3D

A lot of work has been put into creating 3-D buildings (figure 3) in many of the

major cities in the World. This

work was originally mainly done

by Google but now this work is

done by the users of Google.

Google has made this possible

by providing a free program

called SketchUp which allows

users to create 3D models of

anything from needles to

satellites and skyscrapers.

These models can be shared

with other users by uploading them into Google´s 3D Warehouse. It would be

possible to model a whole city with SketchUp.

2.2. Google Maps

Google Maps (figure 4) is a web mapping service application which focuses more

on urban areas rather than the

whole globe as its related product

Google Earth. It uses mainly high-

resolution imagery taken by

airplanes and the GIS data used in

Google Maps are provided by Tele

Atlas, NAVTEQ and MapABC.

(Google, Google Maps, 2009).

Google Maps provides not only the

map, satellite image or a hybrid of

both but also a range of operations Figure 4 Google Maps - London

Figure 3 Google Earth 3D – Eiffel Tower

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on the map including zooming, panning, information pop-ups and overlays.

Google Maps still has limited coverage but most major cities of the world are

covered. Because of concern that some of the satellite images that are displayed

in Google Maps could be used by terrorist to help them plan attacks, some of the

areas are distorted.

2.3. Google Street View

Google released Google Street View (figure 5) in May 2007. Street View is an

additional feature of both Google

Maps and Google Earth. For the

first year only areas in the United

States were covered but today six

countries have been added. The

images in Google Street View

were taken with a spherical

camera that was mounted on a

car. The images are placed in

image orbs within Google Maps.

This offers a new and exciting way

for example students to examine

the environment around any Universities that they are interested in applying to.

Figure 5 Google Street View - New York

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2.4. Microsoft Virtual Earth

Microsoft Virtual Earth (figure 6) is proprietary software from Microsoft. It is in

many ways similar to Google

Earth.

“The Microsoft Virtual Earth

platform is an integrated set of

services that provides quality

geospatial data, rich imagery,

cutting-edge technology, and

dependable performance that

helps organizations visualize data

and provide immersive end-user

experiences. The Virtual Earth

platform, now supported by both

the Virtual Earth Map Control and

the new Virtual Earth Web

Services, offers new map detail,

feature enhancements, and robust

platform capabilities” (Microsoft, 2008).

Figure 6 Microsoft Virtual Earth - North-America

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2.5. OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap (OSM) was founded in July 2004 and it is a collaborative project

to create a free editable map of the world. Just like Wikipedia, on which it is

loosely modeled, OpenStreetMap (figure 7) is resolutely free software. Both

rendered images and the vector dataset are available for download under a

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (Wikipedia,

OpenStreetMap, 2009b).

It is very easy to make maps in OSM. The process is performed in five steps;

gather data, upload data, edit maps, edit data and finally render the map. The

maps are created using data collected by registered users using portable GPS

devices, aerial photography and other free sources. This process took a long time

but after Yahoo gave OSM permission to use Yahoo´s aerial imagery in 2004 the

Figure 7 OpenStreetMap - Akureyri

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speed increased greatly. A whole community around OSM has been mapping the

globe since the beginning and it is an attempt to map the Earth.

One of the advantages of OpenStreetMap is that it will run on any browser as long

as it has JavaScript installed. The "slippy" map that displays the map is powered

by an Ajax component. It can be used inside a browser as you would do with

Google Maps and Google Earth.

OSM uses nodes (a point with coordinates), segments (a directed connection

between two nodes) and ways (an ordered list of segments) as its geometric

building blocks. The nodes, segments and ways can have tags that denote the

type and properties of the object.

The architecture of OSM (figure 8) is quite complicated. The database holds all

the data that users of the system have generated. Once a week a Planet.osm file

is created. This file is snapshot of the OSM database and it is in OSM XML

format. OSM uses two different ways to render tiles, with Mapnik or Osmarender.

Mapnik reads this file to generate tiles that the Slippy Map references.

Figure 8 OSM components (Wood, 2007)

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Osmarender is a rule-based rendering tool for generating Scalable Vector

Graphics (SVG) images of OSM data. Tiles@home is a distributed program to

render osmarender maps. The Slippy Map can be configured to request tiles from

Osmarender instead of Mapnik.

There are a wide range of editors available for OSM. Some of the most widely

used editors are JOSM, Potlatch and Merkaartor.

Potlatch is a Flash online editor that is built in to the OSM webpage. It is intended

as a quick way to edit maps as the changes are sent back to the server as soon

as you make them. Potlatch can edit OSM map data over Yahoo! Aerial Imagery.

This saves a lot of time for people creating maps as they don’t have to start with a

blank canvas each time. The Aerial images can give the street layout.

JOSM is a stand-alone editor. It can work with OSM data offline. It is intended for

all major editing of OSM data. It is highly configurable and extendable via plugins.

Yahoo! Aerial Imagery is available in JOSM via the YWMS plugin.

Merkaartor is a small editor that is still under early development. Yahoo! Aerial

Imagery is available in Merkaartor.

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2.6. Quantum GIS

Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a open source geographical information system that runs

on all platforms. It supports vector,

raster and database formats. QGIS

is licensed under the GNU General

Public License. QGIS lets you

browse and create map data on

your computer (figure 9). It

supports many common spatial

data formats. (GIS, 2008). QGIS is

a map making tool but it provides

the ability publish your map on the

internet by using the export to Mapfile capability. This requires a webserver with

UMN MapServer installed.

2.7. GIS in Iceland

A number of companies and government institutes are using GIS in Iceland. A

few of them will be discussed in the following sub-chapters.

2.7.1. National Land Survey of Iceland

The objective of the

National Land Survey of

Iceland is to provide and

share geographical

information on Iceland.

They offer several Map

services on the web

(Landmælingar, 2009).

Figure 9 Quantum GIS

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2.7.2. LUKR

The Land Information System of Reykjavík (LUKR) was started around 1989.

Its purpose was to build an enterprise GIS system for the municipality’s

technical departments as well as Iceland Telecomm.

In 1997 the data was made accessible to the public via the internet application

borgarvefsjá which is accessible at http://arcgis.reykjavik.is/borgarvefsja/. The

City of Reykjavík uses this application to provide the public information about

street names, pipelines, cables, places of interest, aerial photos, traffic and

population density just to name some information. Well over 100 “layers” of

information can be displayed on the map (figure 11).

2.7.3. The National Energy Authority

The National Energy Authority (Orkustofnun) uses an internet applications to

provide information about the environment in Iceland.

Figure 10 Map services of the National Land Survey of Iceland

Figure 11 Borgarvefsjá

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The Gagnavefsjá (figure 12) is used to display information about various

sources of energy in Iceland (Orkustofnun, 2009).

2.7.4. The National Energy Authority

The Environment Agency Náttúruvefsjá (figure 13) is a system for managing

and sharing diverse information about the flora, vegetation and weather in

Iceland. This system was designed by the digital design company Gagarín

and is a Flash based application.

Figure 13 Náttúruvefsjá

Figure 12 Gagnavefsjá

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2.7.5. National Energy Authority

The National Energy Authority recently made is a system, Landgrunnsvefsjá

(figure 14) for managing and sharing diverse information about data pertaining

to the Icelandic Continental Shelf. One of the purposes of the system is to

assist those seeking

information on the

licensing area. For

example, it shows which

blocks are available in the

licensing round, and gives

an overview of the

available data. This

system was designed by

the digital design company

Gagarín and is a Flash based application. (Gagarín, 2009).

2.7.6. University of Iceland Campus Map

This is a map (figure 15) of the University of Iceland Campus. This project

uses Google Maps to

display various

information about

buildings, stores,

recreation, banks and

entertainment available

around the University of

Iceland in Reykjavík.

(Kardjilov, 2007)

Figure 14 Landgrunnsvefsjá

Figure 15 University of Iceland Campus Map

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2.7.7. The town of Akureyri

Akureyri offers two web applications to view information about the town of

Akureyri. The first of these applications is provided by Loftmyndir ehf.

Loftmyndir ehf. offers its customers access to its database of aerial images of

Iceland. The application (figure 16) that Akureyri town uses from Loftmyndir

ehf. is similar to Google Earth and Openstreetmap.

The other application (figure 17) is an Infrapath® 2009 application that is

provided by Snertill. Infrapath® 2009 can be used to design web based GIS

applications to share geospatial and engineering data (Snertill, 2009).

Figure 17 Infrapath Akureyri

Figure 16 Map viewer from Loftmyndir ehf.

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2.8. Summary

This chapter examined previous work done on similar systems to the one this

project will create. Most of the applications that are used by Icelandic institutions

to publish GI are flash based applications. Many of them that were examined are

produced by the company Gagarín. Google Earth and Google Maps are

proprietary software so they are not free software. You cannot incorporate any of

them into a project and run your software under a relatively permissive license for

others to take up your ideas and improve. OpenStreetMap is an open-source

project that is resolutely free and it can be view in any browser.

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3. System Design

After comparing the different GIS available it was decided to use the OpenStreetMap

project in our project. Proprietary software was quickly excluded because of license

fees.

The lack of functionality in some of the open source software was not considered a

problem since source software supports the understanding of concepts as it enables

direct access to the implementation of the lacking functionality, i.e. the source code.

3.1. Proposed system

OSM is ideal for this project. OSM provides mapping data, tools, and

infrastructure that are all available under open source and Free Software licenses.

Because of difficulties getting the University to host this project it will be setup on

a laptop while making and testing improvements. Hopefully this project will later

Figure 18 Comparison of proprietary and free open source software (Steiniger & Bocher, 2008)

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be hosted on the Universities servers. A fully functional OSM server will be setup

and all the data from OSM about Akureyri will be downloaded into a database and

used in this project.

Possible new features that will be implemented locally are:

• the ability to click on buildings belonging to the University and get

information about the room; ground plan, number, picture, timetable etc.

• the chance for the University and student unions to insert information on

the maps e.g. put markers on the map with information about Sprellmót.

New and foreign students often so not know their way around Akureyri and

it would be convenient for them, when something is going-on, to get a mail

with a link that directs them to the slippy map that would display the

location of the occurrence.

• 3-D view of the University campus

One part of this project will be to use a GPS to map the University campus. This

will be done by walking around the campus with a Garmin Colorado 300 device

and record the coordinates. The data will then be uploaded into the server and

edited and then rendered into a map.

The slippy map that OSM uses will be used in this project with minimal

adjustments. The current version offers the ability

to turn layers and overlays on and off. This vill be

used with different layers with regional

information.

3.2. Changes made to the original design

Because of various problems encountered during the project some changes had

to be made to the proposed system. It was decided to take the design of the

Figure 19 OSM Slippy Map

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system more in the direction of a Intranet instead of public access. The whole

design would focus on the employees of the University rather then the students.

This meant that the possibility for student unions to access the system was not

implemented.

I managed to keep up with the project timetable (Appendix B) pretty good until the

end of January. After that the problems I encountered led to the decision to cut

some features from the original design.

Finally it was also decided that the option of displaying the University campus in

3-D would take to much time to implement and would be more suited for future

work.

3.3. Summary

In this chapter I gave a description of the proposed system and how the system

design changed during the implementation of the system. Various changes were

made on the system design during the implementation. The scope of the system

was reduced because of the decision to implement the system as an Intranet. The

3-D feature was dropped because of time issues.

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4. System Implementation

4.1. Technologies

The hardware used to develop this project is a DELL Inspiron 1525 laptop. The

laptop is running Windows Vista Basic 6.0.6001 edition with service pack 1

installed. It has 2 GB of memory a 1,87 GHz Intel Pentium Dual CPU.

Since the OpenStreetMap was originally developed on a Linux machine and most

of the software used the edit and create maps are also Linux based it was

decided to install Fedora 9 on the laptop and run Fedora as a virtual machine on

the laptop. This was done because it simplifies the process of setting up internet

access since the virtual machine detects Windows internet settings automatically.

4.1.1. MySQL

MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database. MySQL is a key

part of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP / Perl / Python). A growing number

of companies are using LAMP instead of expensive proprietary software

stacks because of its lower price and freedom from platform lock-in. (MySQL,

2009).The database holding the nodes information is a MySQL version 5.0.38

database.

4.1.2. phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a free software tool written in PHP. phpMyAdmin supports a

wide range of operations with MySQL. The 3.1.2 version of phpMyAdmin was

installed to handle the administration of MySQL (phpMyAdmin, 2009).

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4.1.3. Ruby on Rails

Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language. Ruby on Rails is a

web application development framework that is written in Ruby. It is intended

to make developing database driven web-based applications faster and more

productive (Hansson, 2009).

4.1.4. Fedora 9

The Fedora Project is a Red Hat sponsored and community supported open

source project (Hat, 2008). Fedora well suited for this project since it is free

open source software that anyone can use, modify and distribute.

4.1.5. VMware Workstation

VMware Workstation 6.5.1 was installed to run Fedora 9 as a virtual machine.

VMware Workstation makes it possible to create and run multiple virtual

machines on desktops or laptops. This way you can run Linux and Windows

side-by-side on the same computer (VMware, 2009).

4.1.6. Browsers

Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are the two most popular browsers (Data,

2009) and they will therefore be used to test this project.

4.1.7. Osmosis

Osmosis is a command line java application for processing OSM data. It can

be used to read an OSM file into to MySQL database (OpenStreetMap,

Osmosis, 2009a). Osmosis 0.30 was installed and used during this project.

4.1.8. Osm2pgsql

Since Mapnik cannot read OSM data another tool is needed to do that.

Osm2pgsql is a utility program that converts OSM data into a format that can

be loaded into PostgreSQL (OpenStreetMap, Osm2pgsql, 2009b).

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4.1.9. PostGIS

PostGIS is an extension of the PostgreSQL object-relation database. PostGIS

allows the PostgreSQL server to be used a backend spatial database for GIS

(PostGIS, 2009).

4.1.10. Mapnik

Mapnik is a free opens-source toolkit written in C++ for developing mapping

applications. It can be used for both desktop and web development (Pavlenko,

2009). Mapnik renders the main Slippy Map layer for OSM. Mapnik 0.5.1 was

installed during this project.

4.1.11. OpenLayers

OpenLayers is a JavaScript library for map data with no server-side

dependencies. OpenLayers is free and open-source software (OpenLayers,

2009). The Slippy Map uses OpenLayers to dynamically request tiles from the

server.

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4.2. The System

The system consists of a database, tileserver and slippy map. The whole system

is run on a virtual Fedora 9 machine. VMware Workstation is used to run the

virtual machine. The primary reason for this was that since the laptop used for the

project was being used at home and at the University it was easier to let the

VMware configure the internet connection automatically instead of having to

reconfigure the settings each time when changing location from home to the

University and vice versa.

4.2.1. Architecture

Figure 20 Architecture of the system

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On the data layer (figure 29) the MySQL database holds the information which

consists of node, segments and ways that all have tags. Osmosis was used to

read the OSM data in Iceland.osm file into the database. Osm2pgsql is used to

read the same Iceland.osm file into a Postgre database.

Mapnik reads the Postgre database and renders 256x256 pixels tiles which

are served from the tileserver. Mapnik uses a different file to render coastlines

and world boundaries. At low zoom level Mapnik renders all the sea as a solid

fill of blue from two shapefiles that have a low resolution. At high zoom levels

the coast polygons used are generated from the data in the database.

The Slippy Map is an Ajax component.

JavaScript runs in the browser, which

dynamically requests tiles from the server

in the background. The Slippy Map’s

JavaScript references URLs such as e.g.

http://localhost/osm_tiles2/1/2/3.png for

tiles. The WeBrick server handles these

URLs but the Mod tile renders and serves

tiles for the Mapnik layer on the Slippy

Map. Mod tile is a C implementation to

serve files from the disk and manage the rendering queue. Mod tile exists of

two parts: renderd, which is a rendering daemon which calls Mapnik and writes

the tiles to the filesystem and mod_tile which is an Apache module which

handles the requests for tiles to be rendered. Every tile has a timestamp that

states when it was rendered and a flag which is used to identify if the tile is

ready to be re-rendered.

Figure 21 A tile generated by Mapnik

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4.2.2. Database

There was no change made to the structure of the OSM database as planned.

This was due to lack of time. Instead of getting the planet.osm file from OSM

which contains data covering the whole planet it was decided to get an extract

that covered Iceland. This was mainly done because of the size of the

planet.osm which in March 2009 is over 150GB. The Iceland.osm file is only

40.4 MB.

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Figure 22 The database ©Milo van der Linden

4.2.3. The GUI

The GUI consists of a Slippy Map (Appendix A) that allows the user to zoom in

and scroll around the map of Iceland. There are two main controls on the GUI:

the PanZoomBar and the Layer Switcher.

The PanZoomBar is composed of a PanPanel and a ZoomBar. It is displayed

in the upper left corner of the map. The PanPanel is composed of four

directional arrows that can be used to pan the map west, east, north or south.

The map can also be panned by clicking on the map, holding the mouse

button down and dragging the map in the desired direction. The ZoomBar is

used to zoom in and out of the map. This is done by clicking on the “+” or “-

“sign at the top and bottom of the ZoomBar. You can also use the scroll wheel

to zoom in and out.

The Layer Switcher (figure 24) is shown minimized on the right top edge of the

map when the GUI is first stared. The Layer Switcher can be expanded by

Figure 23 The GUI of the system

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clicking in on the “+” sign. When the Layer Switcher is expanded it displays the

Base and Overlay Layers that are available. The user can change what

information is displayed on the map by switching between layers. The Base

Layers that are available are:

• Mapnik

• 1st floor (not completed)

• 2nd floor (not completed)

• 3rd floor (not completed)

The Base layers control how the map is rendered. The “Mapnik” layer displays

the tiles that Mapnik renders. It is the default way to display the tiles in the

system. The “1st floor”, “2nd floor” and “3rd

floor” layers are currently not implemented

but the plan was to implement them but I ran

out of time. The way they were supposed to

work is that by selecting e.g. the “3rd floor”

layer the user would get the ground plan for

the 3rd floor on top of the outline of the

buildings of the University of Akureyri. The

user would then be able to click on a room

on the ground plan and get information

about the room he clicked on.

The Overlays that are available are:

• Lecture rooms

• Meeting rooms

• Office equipment

• Coffee

The Overlay layers are used to select what information is displayed on the

map. By selecting the “Lecture rooms” overlay all the lecture rooms for the

selected floor are displayed. By selecting the “Meeting rooms” overlay all the

Figure 24 Layer Switcher

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meeting rooms for the selected floor are displayed. By selecting the “Office

equipment” overlay the printers,

photocopiers, shredders and paper storages

are displayed for the selected floor. By

selecting the “Coffee” overlay all the places

where coffee is available on the selected

floor is displayed. All the items that are

displayed have their own icon (figure 25).

4.3. Summary

In this chapter I have given a thorough description of the implementation of the

system. I described the technologies that were used throughout the project. I

described the architecture of the system and how the database is structured. I

also gave a description on how the many different utilities work together to create

the map that is displayed in the browser and finally I described the GUI of the

system.

Figure 25 An example of an icon on the

map

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5. Evaluation

No formal evaluation has taken place yet since the project did not reach the stage

where a running prototype was created.

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6. Conclusion

6.1. Future work

There are almost endless ways that this project could evolve. Some of the more

interesting direction the project could take in my opinion is listed here below.

6.1.1. The map in 3-D

Work has already begun in turning OSM into a three-dimensional landscape

map (figure 26). The project GDI3D is working on creating a 3D OSM for the

entire Germany (GDI3D, 2009). It would be very interesting to develop the

University of Akureyri campus in a similar way.

6.1.2. Adding more information

The system currently displays a limited amount of information. It would be

interesting to be able to display some of the information available in Stefanía

on the map. For example when the user clicks on a lecture room on the map

the timetable for that room would be displayed or when the user clicks on a

meeting room he could get information if the meeting room is occupied or not.

Figure 26 OSM in 3-D ©GDI3D

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6.2. My Work

This project has given me various skills that I did not have before. My skills and

knowledge in Linux has from knowing almost nothing to intermediate skills in

setting up and using Linux.

What I really liked about this project was finding out about the OpenStreetMap

project and various linked projects like OpenCycleMap and OpenHikeMap.

I was very pleased with the co-operation and guidance of my project supervisor.

His comments and advice help me throughout the project.

A short overview of the things that have been beneficiary for me during this

project:

• Researched various GIS systems, both open-source and proprietary

software.

• Researched what previous work has been done and what open-source

projects are using GIS to enable information access over the internet.

• Learned how the OpenStreetMap project began and how it has evolved

into the largest and most successful user-generated mapping project.

• Linux: setting up and using Linux as a virtual machine on my laptop.

• Server: This was the first time I setup a server and I learned much from the

problems I encountered with it.

I am very disappointed that I was not able to finish the project. The main reason

for that were the problems I encountered setting up the server and getting it to

render tiles for me. Although I finally managed to do it was too late (two days

before the final delivery date) since it did not leave me with any time to setup the

layers as I wanted them to work. I am determined to finishing the project even

though I will not meet the deadline. This project has opened my eyes about the

possibilities that lie in GIS and its possibilities in displaying spatial information

over the internet. This is a concept I will defiantly research further in the future.

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6.3. Summary

In this chapter I described future work that I think would be interesting to do. I also

reflected on my work during this project and discussed the pros and cons of the

project.

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http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Gagarín. (2009, January 13). Landgrunnsvefsjá. Retrieved January 15, 2009, from Landgrunnsvefsjá:

http://www.landgrunnsvefsja.is/

GDI3D. (2009). Information. Retrieved April 17, 2009, from OSM-3D Germany:

http://www.geographie.uni-bonn.de/karto/hd3d/index.en.htm

GIS, Q. (2008, July 9). QGIS. Retrieved January 5, 2009, from Quantum GIS: http://www.qgis.org/

Google. (2009, January 9). Age of satellite imagery and data . Retrieved January 14, 2009, from

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps

Hansson, D. H. (2009). Ruby on Rails. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from Ruby on Rails:

http://rubyonrails.org/

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http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f9/en_US/

Kardjilov, M. (2007). Kort af háskólasvæðinu - University of Iceland campus map. Retrieved January 5,

2009, from Google Maps: http://www3.hi.is/pub/gis/

Landmælingar. (2009, April 6). Landmælingar Íslands. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from Landmælingar

Íslands: http://www.lmi.is/landsurvey.nsf/pages/index.html/

Microsoft. (2008). Microsoft Virtual Earth geospatial data 3D modle accuracy. Retrieved January 5,

2009, from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/platform/default.aspx

MySQL. (2009). MySQL :: About MySQL. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from MySQL:

http://www.mysql.com/

OpenLayers. (2009). OpenLayers: Free Maps for the Web . Retrieved April 11, 2009, from OpenLayers:

http://openlayers.org/

OpenStreetMap. (2009b, April 1). Osm2pgsql. Retrieved April 10, 2009, from OpenStreetMap:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm2pgsql

OpenStreetMap. (2009a, March 31). Osmosis. Retrieved April 10, 2009, from OpenStreetMap:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis

Orkustofnun. (2009). Gagnavefsjá. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from Gagnavefsjá:

http://gullhver.os.is/website/gagnavefsja_ie/viewer.htm

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Page, D. (2002, May 1). A Rising Star. Retrieved December 20, 2009, from Goverment Technology:

http://www.govtech.com/gt/10425

Pavlenko, A. (2009, April 1). Mapnik C++/Python GIS Toolkit FAQ. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from

Mapnik: http://www.mapnik.org/faq/

phpMyAdmin. (2009). phpMyAdmin. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from phpMyAdmin:

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php

PostGIS. (2009). What is PostGIS? Retrieved April 11, 2009, from PostGIS: http://www.postgis.org/

Rogers, J., & Luna, R. (2004). IMPACT OF GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS ON

GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING. Fifth International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical

Engineering (pp. 1-23). New York: University of Missouri.

Snertill. (2009, March 31). Infrapath 2009 and Infrapath FM 6.5 . Retrieved April 12, 2009, from

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Steiniger, S., & Bocher, E. (2008, September 5). Open source desktop GIS. Retrieved January 6, 2009,

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http://www.geo.unizh.ch/publications/degen/sstein_foss_desktop_gis_overview.pdf

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Appendix A – Code Listing <html>

<head>

<title>Snorri G. Sigurðsson - Final Year Project</title>



<script src="http://www.openlayers.org/api/OpenLayers.js"></script>



<script src="http://www.openstreetmap.org/openlayers/OpenStreetMap.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">

// Start position for the map (hardcoded here for simplicity,

// but maybe you want to get from URL params)

var lat=65.6853

var lon=-18.121

var zoom=18

var map; //complex object of type OpenLayers.Map

//Initialise the 'map' object

function init() {

map = new OpenLayers.Map ("map", {

controls:[

new OpenLayers.Control.Navigation(),

new OpenLayers.Control.PanZoomBar(),

new OpenLayers.Control.LayerSwitcher(),

new OpenLayers.Control.Attribution()],

maxExtent: new OpenLayers.Bounds(-20037508.34,-

20037508.34,20037508.34,20037508.34),

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maxResolution: 156543.0399,

numZoomLevels: 18,

units: 'm',

projection: new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:900913"),

displayProjection: new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326")

} );

// Define the map layer

layerMapnik = new OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.Mapnik("Mapnik");

map.addLayer(layerMapnik);

first = new OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.Mapnik("1st floor");

map.addLayer(first);

second = new OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.Mapnik("2nd floor");

map.addLayer(second);

third = new OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.Mapnik("3rd floor");

map.addLayer(third);

lecture_rooms = new OpenLayers.Layer.Markers("Lecture rooms");

map.addLayer(lecture_rooms);

meeting_rooms = new OpenLayers.Layer.Markers("Meeting rooms");

map.addLayer(meeting_rooms);

//Position of the center of the Unak campus

var lonLat = new OpenLayers.LonLat(lon, lat).transform(new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326"), map.getProjectionObject

());

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//Position of the coffee in Borgir

var lonLat2 = new OpenLayers.LonLat(lon+0.00075, lat-0.00037).transform(new

OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326"),

map.getProjectionObject());

//Position of the coffee in Sólborgir

var lonLat3 = new OpenLayers.LonLat(lon-0.0016, lat+0.0003).transform(new

OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326"),

map.getProjectionObject());

map.setCenter (lonLat, zoom); //Setting the map to start at UNAK

equipment = new OpenLayers.Layer.Markers( "Office equipment" );

map.addLayer(equipment);

var markers = new OpenLayers.Layer.Markers( "Coffee" );

map.addLayer(markers);

var size = new OpenLayers.Size(20,34);

var offset = new OpenLayers.Pixel(-(size.w/2), -size.h);

var icon_coffe = new

OpenLayers.Icon('http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Applications-

ristretto.svg/120px-Applications-ristretto.svg.png',size,offset);

//Drawing the coffee icons on the map

markers.addMarker(new OpenLayers.Marker(lonLat3,icon_coffe.clone()));

bmarker = new OpenLayers.Marker(lonLat2,icon_coffe);

bmarker.events.register('mousedown', bmarker, function(evt) { alert("There is coffee

available in Borgir"); OpenLayers.Event.stop(evt); });

markers.addMarker(bmarker);

map.addControl(new OpenLayers.Control.LayerSwitcher());

}

</script>

</head>



<body onload="init();">

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<div style="width:100%; height:100%" id="map"></div>

</body>

</html>

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Appendix B – Project Plan

ID Task Name Duration Start Finish

1 Final year project 170 days? Thu 28.8.08 W ed 22.4.09

2 Select project and supervisor 16 days? Thu 28.8.08 Thu 18.9.08

3 Sign project list 1 day? Fri 19.9.08 Fri 19.9.08

4 Information gathering 48 days? Mon 22.9.08 W ed 26.11.08

5 Outline project with supervisor48 days? Mon 22.9.08 Wed 26.11.08

6 Research previous work23 days? Wed 1.10.08 Fri 31.10.08

7 System design 23 days? Mon 1.12.08 W ed 31.12.08

8 Server 6 days? Mon 1.12.08 Mon 8.12.08

9 Database 6 days? Mon 8.12.08 Mon 15.12.08

10 System enhancement 13 days? Mon 15.12.08 Wed 31.12.08

11 Implementation 3 days? Thu 1.1.09 Mon 5.1.09

12 Setup server 3 days? Thu 1.1.09 Mon 5.1.09

13 Interim report 12 days? Thu 1.1.09 Fri 16.1.09

14 Write Interim report 11 days? Thu 1.1.09 Thu 15.1.09

15 Submit Interim report 1 day? Fri 16.1.09 Fri 16.1.09

16 Programming and setup 26 days? Mon 19.1.09 Mon 23.2.09

17 Program system enhancement26 days? Mon 19.1.09 Mon 23.2.09

18 Testing 26 days? Mon 16.2.09 Mon 23.3.09

19 Alfa Testing 6 days? Mon 16.2.09 Mon 23.2.09

20 Beta Testing 10 days? Tue 24.2.09 Mon 9.3.09

21 Final Testing 10 days? Tue 10.3.09 Mon 23.3.09

22 Presentation 3 days? Mon 16.3.09 W ed 18.3.09

23 Prepare presentation 2 days? Mon 16.3.09 Tue 17.3.09

24 Present presentation 1 day? Wed 18.3.09 Wed 18.3.09

25 Final report 13 days? W ed 1.4.09 Fri 17.4.09

26 Write final report 12 days? Wed 1.4.09 Thu 16.4.09

27 Submit final report 1 day? Fri 17.4.09 Fri 17.4.09

28 Demonstration of work 1 day? W ed 22.4.09 W ed 22.4.09

29 Demonstrate project 1 day? Wed 22.4.09 Wed 22.4.09

W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S

28 Jul '08 4 Aug '08 11 Aug '08 18 Aug '08 25 Aug '08 1 Sep '08

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19.9

M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T

1 Sep '08 8 Sep '08 15 Sep '08 22 Sep '08 29 Sep '08

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W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F

29 Sep '08 6 Oct '08 13 Oct '08 20 Oct '08 27 Oct '08

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S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S

3 Nov '08 10 Nov '08 17 Nov '08 24 Nov '08

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T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W

1 Dec '08 8 Dec '08 15 Dec '08 22 Dec '08 29 Dec '08

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16.1

T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S

5 Jan '09 12 Jan '09 19 Jan '09 26 Jan '09

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S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S

2 Feb '09 9 Feb '09 16 Feb '09 23 Feb '09

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18.3

S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T

2 Mar '09 9 Mar '09 16 Mar '09 23 Mar '09 30 Mar '09

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29 Demonstrate project 1 day? Wed 22.4.09 Wed 22.4.09 22.4

W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T

30 Mar '09 6 Apr '09 13 Apr '09 20 Apr '09 27 Apr '09

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Documents

A spatially-enabled Internet application to support information … · 2018-11-07 · 1960 the traditional way representing GI was to use paper maps. This form had some advantages