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Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies

University of Arkansas

Mid-America National Map

Home » Research » Geoinformatics (GIS/RS) » Geospatial Interoperability » Mid-America National Map

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has funded several The National Map projects across the nation. In 2003, the USGS funded a project that addresses the cooperation and collaboration necessary for developing the capabilities and functionality of a fully implemented National Map. This project tested some of the technology and functionality of developing The National Map on a regional scale.

Open GIS Consortium Web Mapping Service (WMS) 1.1.1 implementing wrappers were developed and distributed to the cooperating partners. The partnering agencies served up their data through the web mapping service and the data was seamlessly displayed in a single map viewing client using consistent style representation and symbology.

This project focused on the interoperability of serving geospatial framework data through a distributed network of servers. Emphasis for this project was put on serving statewide content of four themes of data: Transportation, Boundaries, Hydrography and Orthoimagery. Each of the themes was unique to each state. For example, the transportation theme may have been developed by the Highway and Transportation Department in Arkansas and the U.S. Bureau of the Census in Missouri.

Each cooperating state institution was responsible for maintaining their geospatial data, installing the WMS wrapper on their server, hosting the web-mapping service and providing server support, as well as assisting with the semantic mapping of their data for appropriate display and symbolization.

The Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies worked with the Arkansas Geographic Information Office, Kansas Data Access Support Center (DASC), Missouri Spatial Data Information Service, Distributed Active Archive Center, and the United States Geological Survey throughout the course of this project.