Implementing OpenGIS standards for the GBIF-Austria web portal
Paul Schreilechner1, Michael Hadrobolec2, Kerstin Placer2, Robert Venier1. 1BIOGIS Consulting GmbH, Dr.-Hans-Lechner-Strasse 6, 5071 Wals-Siezenheim. 2Umweltbundesamt GmbH, Spittelauer Lánde 5 , 1090 Wien/Österreich.The development of the GBIF-Austria web portal was started early this year with a pilot project supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (Bundesministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt und Wasserwirtschaft - BMLFUW) . Seven partners are implementing special software components based on BioCASE-protocol and ABCD schema. One of the modules of the project deals with spatial data and production of dynamic maps. According to the philosophy of using open source software based on public standards we are using the webmapping server “degree” which is the official reference implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium standard “Web Map Service 1.1.1 (WMS)”.
Whenever a user starts a query, the portal software requests the distributed individual data nodes and stores the query results in a temporary cache which is used for subsequent queries. On demand a distribution map is generated by the portal software by requesting a map from the degree webmapping server. The distribution sites are mapped as a dynamic layer via a OGC compliant web feature service by querying data cached individually for each session.
Thus the open software architecture of the project enables integration of additional webmapping services and functional extensions for spatial analysis.