USGS has an amazing amount of high resolution imagery available.  Sometimes access outside of The National Map, can be confusing--what tiles are in my area, etc. (I encourage you to check out the National Map for a more integrated view). 

I have figured out what orthos are available from USGS along the Gulf Coast (LA, MS, AL) and created access points via ArcGIS layers and Google Earth Network Links.

To access color USGS Orthos (color and B/W) from gisdata.usgs.gov for the disaster area in Google Earth use the following network link:

www.mapdex.org/GE_KML_LINK.cfm?servername=gisdata.usgs.gov&mapservice=USGS_EDC_Ortho_DOQQ&layer_id=DOQQ_208,DOQQ_209,DOQQ_210,DOQQ_227,DOQQ_228,DOQQ_229,DOQQ_246,DOQQ_227_BW,DOQQ_228_BW,DOQQ_245_BW

To access the same data in ArcGIS download the following layer file and add it to ArcGIS:

http://www.mapdex.org/data/USGS_EDC_Ortho_DOQQ.lyr


Please note the scale dependacies in these services.  They will not turn on for large areas (limited to under 1:3million scale).

Jeremy

In wake of the devastating hurricane that hit the Gulf coast this week, I thought I would put some links to interactive map servers found on Mapdex in the area.

Please only use these mapservices if you are helping in the recovery and evacuation effort. 

• A list of Louisiana servers:  http://www.mapdex.org/search/search.cfm?serverkeyword=louisiana&tab=svr&type=svr
• Orthos around New Orleans by location (mostly from USGS, around tile doqq229):   http://www.mapdex.org/search/dev/search.cfm?layerkeyword=ortho%20or%20doqq%20or%20aerial&street=&place=New%20Orleans,%20Louisiana&zip=&envelope=-90.138:-89.6262:29.8699:30.1746&type=adr&srt=lyr&tab=adr

I will post more links as I find them.

If anybody has specific requests let me know.

Jeremy

Hi All-

Thanks to encouragement from Stefan at Ogle Earth I have started working toward enabling ArcIMS servers indexed on Mapdex to be used in Google Earth via a network link/KML Ground Overlay script.  It is actually pretty easy to convert an ArcIMS service into a KML network link.  I will talk about it more in the next couple of days.  But if you want to check out some links to data in Kansas (from my organizations servers) try entering these as network links (Set your View-Based Refresh to occur after the camera stops):

City of Lawrence, KS 6inch DOOQ:
http://www.mapdex.org/GE_KML_LINK.cfm?servername=koufax.kgs.ku.edu&mapservice=lawrence_Imagery

State of Kansas 2002 1m DOOQ:
http://www.mapdex.org/GE_KML_LINK.cfm?servername=maps.kansasgis.org&mapservice=kgcc_Imagery&layer_id=0,1

More on the implications of this tomorrow....

Cheers,

Jeremy

Hi All-

Praveen (a talented programmer working on the interface to Mapdex) has built a beta version of a Mapdex spatial search.  This search allows the user to limit layers returned by the geographic extent of the source layers.  Users can search by address, city, or zip (currently for US only, we will be adding a global city/country search in the future).  To implement this search we are taking advantage of the Address Finder (geocoding tool) in ESRI's ArcWeb Public Services. 

So try it out.  Some things to remember:

• This only works on mapservices that have defined a projection in their mapservice (currently 278,769 layers!);
• The envelope search returned by your geographic search is queried against the envelopes in Mapdex (intersection);
• Mapservices often have exaggerated envelopes defined;
• It is still in development, so watch for bugs!

http://www.mapdex.org/search/dev

A fun search to try is:  "photo or image or color or aerial" in or around your geographic point/area of interest

Cheers,

Jeremy

So you have found lots of interactive spatial data via Mapdex, but you want more.  Where is the application that dedicated programmers and GIS specialists have built around these mapservices?  Unfortunately Mapdex does not index the actual application that gets built around a mapservice.  The application is where a mapservice gets turned into a rich web application (built with JSP, ColdFusion MX, ASP, .NET, JAVA, JavaScript, etc.).  The default map viewers on Mapdex are built as generic applications that work with any mapservice (one in Flash, the other in ColdFusion MX).  These allow you to simply view the mapservice, but they lack the intricate knowledge of the data to make rich web based applications.

We are thinking of ways to get users of Mapdex back to the original application, but for now if you find a dataset or mapservice that looks interesting try searching for the server on Google.  For example, look for the “chrisweb.dpi.qld.gov.au” server on Google by searching on this, “inurl:chrisweb.dpi.qld.gov.au”

In the future we hope to have a place where application owners can add links to specific applications for specific mapservices.  In the mean time, Google it!

Jeremy

One of the most disturbing things I have found out from building Mapdex is the lack of proper projection information set for mapservices.  It turns out that about 56.5% of mapservices lack a projection or cannot be assumed to be geographic.  Only 31.3% of mapservices have a valid projection while 12.2% can be assumed geographic. 

What happens if you don't have a valid projection set?

• You cannot use your mapservice within ArcMap with other data layers outside of your projection;
• All of your data layers in your mapservice have to be in the same projection;
• You cannot publish your mapservice to the National Map or to GOS;
• Other groups cannot use the valuable data within your mapservice within their data and/or applications;
• Your mapservice cannot be searched spatially within Mapdex or other map search engines.

There is a nice article in ArcUser about georeferencing ArcIMS services.  I encourage you to check it out.

http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0205/files/georef_arcims.pdf

Cheers,

Jeremy

Hi All-

I experimented with Yahoo's API today and found over 125 new servers for Mapdex!  The web is an amazing system.

Jeremy

Hi all-

Say you find a cool map service on Mapdex what do you do with it next?  First if you just want to view a simple map you can use either of the Mapdex map viewers.  The "View" link on the Search Results page will take you to a very simple map viewer.  If you would like to view multiple map services at the same time you can select the "add to map" button on the Search Results page and then select the "show on map" link.  This will open a Flash client that will allow you to view multiple map services from multiple servers at the same time.  The Flash viewer is a good example of a dynamic service based flash implementation.   (If you are interested in more about Flash and ArcIMS I invite you to download my colleague Asif Iqbal's Flash/ArcIMS example browser.  It is well documented and is more than enough to get you started on your way to rich, dynamic interactive map content.  http://drysdale.kgs.ku.edu/flashnew/  )

If you want more interaction with the map service I encourage you to view it in your GIS package.  For the ESRI map services you can easily view them in ArcMap (ArcGIS $$) or ArcExplorer (free).  Here is a good demo on integrating web data in ArcMap. 

The WMS services can be viewed in any number of packages (ESRI, Intergraph wmsviewer, and many others). 

Cheers,

Jeremy

I just finished updating Mapdex this week and thought I would pass along top level domain stats. 

Cheers,

Jeremy

As of August 12, 2005 here are the number of ArcIMS servers indexed by domain:

Domain ID          Number of Servers
us                               317
org                              273
edu                              260
com                              253
gov                              232
IP_ADDRESS_ONLY                   79
ca                                64
net                               62
uk                                39
au                                28
de                                19
it                                17
at                                16
no                                11
nz                                11
be                                10
mx                                10
dk                                 8
se                                 8
cn                                 7
fi                                 7
kr                                 6
es                                 5
jp                                 5
br                                 4
za                                 4
nl                                 4
il                                 4
ar                                 3
ch                                 3
lt                                 3
cz                                 3
co                                 3
mil                                3
pt                                 3
pl                                 3
fr                                 2
id                                 2
in                                 2
ru                                 2
th                                 2
tw                                 2
sk                                 2
is                                 2
pe                                 2
mo                                 2
info                               2
ie                                 1
uy                                 1
tr                                 1
to                                 1
qa                                 1
nu                                 1
ni                                 1
my                                 1
jo                                 1
vn                                 1
hu                                 1
hk                                 1
cl                                 1
gr                                 1
fo                                 1
coop                               1

For you WMS fans...
Domain ID         Number of Servers
ca                                25
gov                               23
de                                15
com                                9
au                                 8
net                                8
org                                7
edu                                5
uk                                 4
cz                                 3
us                                 3
dk                                 3
it                                 3
nl                                 3
at                                 2
co                                 2
ru                                 2
no                                 1
si                                 1

I have noticed that a lot of Mapdex site users want to query by address.  At first it didn't make sense to me.  I am a GIS user.  I did not think outside the box.  It actually makes perfect sense.  The general public doesn't want to know about GIS map services.  They want to find maps around their local geography.  "What maps are available around my house?"  They don't even want to know about XML, web services, GIS, API, etc.  They just want the map. 

We are working on allowing the user to query by location.  Let them enter an address, a zip code, a city, a place name, etc. and we will find all the map services in that general area.  Using ESRI's ArcWeb services we can geocode the address and show the user what map services are available. 

It brings up issues of projection definitions (or lack thereof) in map services, but that is for later post...

Stay tuned.

Jeremy

So why is a site like Mapdex important?  Why do Geographers, planners, scientists, & the general public care if there is an easy way to find spatial data over the Internet?  I think the following quote is very insightful:


--Forward by Michael Goodchild in Internet GIS by Peng and Tsou 2003

There is an enormous amount of publicly available geospatial data.  The trick is finding it.

Cheers,

Jeremy

We just had one of our main web application servers fall victim to a denial of service attack yesterday.  It turns out that the APC PowerChute Business edition software (for the UPS system) has a major flaw that allows someone to issue a denial of service attack on systems running affected versions of the software (6.0-7.0.1).

The symptoms:

• Symantec AntiVirus was disabled and would not start up
• Internet Explorer started normally, but would only display a blank white screen
• Services could not be manually stopped or started
• Control panel was unresponsive
• ArcIMS failed to start after a reboot
• The powerchute services (server and agent) were stuck on "starting" and they could not be disabled from starting up

To fix it we manually removed the services from the registry and then uninstalled the software.

http://www.securitytracker.com/alerts/2004/Jul/1010745.html

Cheers,

Jeremy

Mapdex is a near-global index of over 1,500 servers, serving over 27,000 map services, containing over 400,000 GIS Layers, covering more than 5,000,000 database fields!

This work has been built from the ground up by Jeremy Bartley ( jbartley@kgs.ku.edu ) with help from Amber Reynolds, Asif Iqbal, Praveenkumar Ponnusamy, Kurt Look, Ken Nelson, and Keith Hunsinger. This work is made possible by: GOOGLE Web Service API, ESRI ArcIMS, ORACLE 9.2 XMLDB, ColdFusionMX, and of course the Internet.

Stay tuned to this blog for more information about Mapdex.

Cheers,

Jeremy