Getmapping which has been pioneering WMS (Web Mapping Service) services in Britain is now the force behind the AeroGRID consortium’s provision of Pan-European Imagery via WMS. AeroGRID’s WMS imagery hosted by Getmapping now includes over 2 million km² of 12.5cm to 50cm resolution imagery of Europe including the whole of Benelux, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and the Czech Republic.
Getmapping hosts AeroGRID Pan-European imagery plus its own extensive archive of UK aerial photography and the complete range of Ordnance Survey digital mapping at all scales down to MasterMap. It also hosts the latest Ordnance Survey OpenData.
Increasingly popular, WMS is a standard protocol for streaming georeferenced map imagery over the Internet to web based applications, GIS and CAD software. WMS feeds load only the imagery that a user actually needs to see rather than a whole dataset, which can often result in lengthy load times or delays when panning and zooming. Aerial photography which is a large dataset can put a heavy strain on a network especially when it is being accessed by many users at the same time. Having an external source available through WMS reduces network load and the costs associated with data storage, update and management. WMS is supported by all major GIS and CAD software vendors and is compatible with browser based applications and services.
“Managing large datasets like Pan-European imagery or Ordnance Survey mapping requires considerable resource, not only the servers to host them but also the software and manpower to manage the regular updates. By taking a WMS feed, organisations that are heavy users of mapping such as Local Authorities, Utilities and web application service providers can be sure of fast, cost effective access to the latest versions of the data, without the overhead” said Dave Horner Managing Director of Getmapping.
