WebMap Internet Based Application for Remote Data and Information Access and Visualization

1. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu BALWOIS Conference on Water Observation and Information System for Decision Support Ohrid, FY Republic of Macedonia - 25/29 May 2004 WebMapInternet Based Application for Remote Data and Information Access and Visualization Dejan Lekić, Gordana Špegar Ministry of Science and Environment Protection Directorate for the Environmental Protection Ruze Jovanovica 27a Belgrade Serbia and Montenegro

2. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu What is WebMap? Client-Server Internet based application Data and information browsing, presentation, visualization and retrieval User friendly interface with multi-language support Wide set of possibilities for time series data (including statistical analysis) First version developed for the MEDHYCOS project Further enhancements for the FAO project dealing with water resources on the island of Cyprus Customized versions used in National hydrometeo services in Macedonia and Bulgaria Final version developed for the WOISYDES project, available online at: http://woisydes.mpl.ird.fr/Webmap/App/db/index.php

3. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Applied Information System Technology

4. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Used Technology in Detail Server-side installed packages: RDBMS – Oracle, MS Access, MySQL or any other ODBC compliant database management system Apache Web Server or Microsoft Internet Information Server PHP engine with precompiled ODBC module WebMap Server-side: Database with previously defined logical structure Set of PHP server side scripts and HTML templates Language database for multi-language interface support Client-side required packages: Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher JavaScript engine (preinstalled with IE) VML, vector image rendering engine (preinstalled with IE) WebMap Client-side HTML and XML files (resulting as PHP output) JavaScript modules providing application interactivity CSS files for application interface formatting

5. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Application Description – Data Flow

6. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Application Description User friendly cartographic interface Data and Information attached to geo-referenced set of Objects Objects grouped as a Layer Database input – MS Access, MS Excel, ASCII files for the data, MapInfo for the maps Virtually any kind of file can be attached to the Object including documents, images, audio and video files Entire database can be attached to an Object, providing multi-scale view for detailed map display Several databases interfaced with the same application, on-line database switching All the changes in the database instantly available on the remote client

7. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu WebMap Application - Details Three components: WebAccess Administrator Panel, Database Inventory Browser and Main WebMap application WebAccess Administrator Panel - used for WebMap user management, create, modify and delete users of the system, granting the access to the different security levels of the application, monitoring user's activities on the system Database Inventory Browser – browsing the inventory of the information stored in the database without actualy accessing the raw data. Information grouped by Layers, Objects, Data, Views and Variables

8. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Main WebMap Application - Details

9. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Main WebMap Application – Details 1/5 Four frames: a) Map frame (also a container for data visualization), b) Layers/Objects frame, c) Attachments Tree frame, d) Attachment Details frame Map frame – vector map of the selected region with all the geographical objects grouped in a set of layers. Objects responding to user interaction providing object/layer name Common tools for map zooming, panning (moving), copying and printing are also available through the set of buttons residing in the top-left corner of the map frame Layers/Objects frame contains a list of layers selected by the user for the current map view. Nested sub-lists representing the objects contained in the selected layer These two frames are interconnected – selection in one frame invokes the same selection in the other one User interaction with the object listed/displayed in these frames invokes the creation of on-line database query resulting with the tree structure of the data attached to the selected object

10. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Main WebMap Application – Details 2/5 Attachments Tree frame –shows all the data, files and information attached to the selected object, organized in a form of tree structure Five types of information for each object:General Information, Time Series, Table Series, Meta-data, Attachments General Information - information about object position, attributes, etc. Time Series - data in a form of time series grouped by variable name and/or aggregation level Table Series – time series data, suitable for presenting the time series with large amount of measured values (i.e. chemical analysis) Meta-data - additional static information about the object Attachments - files in any format (spreadsheet, text, image, audio, video, etc.) attached to the objects, organized using themes and file types

11. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Main WebMap Application – Details 3/5 Attachment Details frame - showing the detailed information about the chosen item making available procedures for further data/information visualization, retrieval and manipulation Attached files, table series and meta-data can be viewed on screen and/or downloaded to the client computer Time series type of data provides a complex set of tools for data presentation: Table - tabular data on-screen presentation, including the monthly and yearly minimums, maximums and averages, Report - tabular "print ready" form in MS Word format. Chart - data presented in a form of line/bar chart. The chart can be zoomed, copied and printed since the graph is created in a vector form (Figure 9). File - ASCII or Excel file for the selected period, Statistics - basic statistics about the selected time series, Distributions - theoretical (Gumbel, Pearson III and Log-Pearson III ) and empirical distributions

12. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Main WebMap Application – Details 4/5

13. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu Main WebMap Application – Details 5/5 Other application features also include functionalities accessible using the menu bar Real-time database switching through the list of all the available databases Search tool for searching the entire database (layers, objects, variables, attachments) for a given term Extra feature can be triggered with right mouse button over an object on the map and/or object's list giving information about the selected object in sense of geometrical relationships (contains, belongs) with other objects and their layers displayed on the map Right click over the raster background provide access to the raster image switching menu Full manual accessible through Help menu

14. BALWOIS Conference WebMap Application Lekić Dejan, Gordana Špegar lekicd@beotel.yu WebMap Conclusion WebMap as an application running in a real-time using Internet technologies provides an efficient and low cost tool for accessing remote hydrological or any other kind of database. Multiple databases can be interfaced with the same WebMap application covering geographical regions of different scale, from the scale of the continent to the particular point of interest such is a river or a lake. Full featured interface gives an up-to-date view on the data and information stored in the database and offers many custom procedures for data visualization and presentation. Specific technology for displaying vector objects inside Web browser window increases the usability and interactivity of the user interface. Built-up with a modular approach it can be easily tailored to virtually any kind of relational database structure which contains information organized in a geo-referenced form. Check it on-line: http://www.woisydes.net http://woisydes.mpl.ird.fr/Webmap/App/db/index.php