A number of new geospatial viewing tools from major players in the Internet industry have recently appeared on the scene and are taking the geospatial world by storm. Google,Yahoo, Microsoft, and Amazon have all released web-based mapping tools in the recent past, and collectively these new players to the industry have raised the bar for Internet mapping. Although their functional capabilities don’t provide anything we haven’t seen in web offerings from traditional GIS vendors, their emergence has been significant in that they have managed to capture a wider audience. Google, in particular, has emerged as the leader of this pack with it’s recently released Google Maps product which provides a slick, highly responsive visual interface built using AJAX technologies along with detailed street and aerial imagery data, and an open API allowing customization of the map output including the ability to add application specific data to the map.

Many of the barriers to entry into the world of web mapping have been removed by Google Maps. To understand how this technology has the potential to change the way web mapping is implemented you must understand the traditional approach to publishing dynamic maps in a web based environment. Traditional web mapping products have relied on a sophisticated infrastructure of data, hardware, software, and human resources.

Data for a traditional web mapping application can be broken into two distinct categories: base data and application specific data. Base data or background data usually includes the geographic region covered by the application and often includes layers such as aerial imagery and photos, streets, and organizational boundaries. Application specific data would include geographic data layers specific to the application being developed. For instance, in a web mapping application hosted by a city you might have data layers such as parcel and subdivision boundaries, school locations, public office locations, and many other application specific layers. Each of these data layers must be obtained, loaded onto a server managed by the organization, and updated periodically. With Google Maps you no longer have to worry about obtaining and managing your own base data. Aerial imagery and street data is included with Google Maps thus removing the need to obtain and manage these large data sets. However, you are still required to manage your application specific data in either XML or database format.

In addition to the complex data requirements of traditional web mapping products you must also contend with hardware, software, and human resource issues. Hardware and software must be purchased and effectively managed while human resources are necessary for managing the software installations, administering the software, and programming the web applications. Although these requirements are not completely removed through the introduction of Google Maps, they are greatly reduced. Hardware is still needed to host the application specific data and web sites, but the software requirements are essentially removed from the equation. Google Maps is currently a free product and requires no installation or management. However, because this product is a programmer’s toolkit or API you will either need to have some programming expertise or know someone who does. Specifically you will need skills in JavaScript and possibly another Internet programming language such as PHP, ASP.NET, or ColdFusion.

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