DE : Open Source provides useful public city maps

Open Source News - 20 April 2007 - Germany - Deployments and Migrations

Open Source software to combine geographic maps with public information, provided four German cities with usefull new electronic services for their citizens and visitors.

Using only Open Source Software, the cities Bonn, Muenster, Mainz and Nuremberg recently set up a city map tool and a web site that helps them create new services with the geographic and spatial data collected by the city government.

The map tool and web sites for example help to guide visitors, assist in locating cultural events and highlight current and future road construction. The cities are also developing maps, to provide new ways of accessing public information such as collected environmental data on water quality, noise levels or constructions plans. Also in the works are maps pointing out governmental services and other institutions such as nursery schools and hospitals.

Norbert Dephoff, who works at the land registry and surveying office in Muenster, noted how the citizens appreciate the maps showing bus routes. "What they like especially is that the site includes the local departure and arrival times."

Consortium

The four German cities are developing their applications according to open standards, technical specifications for the design of software and applications, established by the Open Geospatial Consortium. This institute developed open standards such as the Web Map Service and Web Feature Service, describing how to retrieve geographic data in a certain graphic format and how to offer it for use in web site applications.

The German city web site maps are built with Mapbender, an Open Source application for manipulating geographic data. The application helps to display, navigate and query the data. Maps with data from various sources can be combined and offered through the internet.

Development on Mapbender started only last year. It is one of the main applications developed by Open Source Geospatial Foundation. The first version of the application dates from last July.

© European Communities 2007