Norcross, GA — Recently, Western Australia’s Department of Planning hosted the Great Web Map Viewer Showdown at the SSSI conference. This challenge simulated an operational scenario with base-to-station data transfers happening live; simultaneously competing for data service access and wireless bandwidth. 

For individuals and organizations utilizing geospatial information, there is a growing need to understand how map viewers on the market compare to one another.  In Western Australia, the number of web-based viewers, wireless broadband services available, and the availability of SLIP (Western Australia’s Shared Land Information Platform) drive this heightened interest.

For this event, Western Australia’s Department of Planning invited ten leading providers of web map technology to participate in the challenge. While nine out of the ten invited vendors declined, ERDAS readily accepted the challenge, successfully fulfilling all the requirements outlined.

This challenge required the vendor to use only a 3G Wireless internet connection to complete the following:

• Demonstrate OGC GetMap, GetFeature and GetLegend capabilities with specific vector and imagery layers sourced from SLIP, followed by the identification of a street address supplied by the facilitator and zooming to it.

• Demonstrate map printing functionality; Integration with external business databases; show feature creation, attribute editing and document linking to a spatial location for real time viewing. The tasks were performed with the assistance of a collaborator also using only a 3G Wireless connection.

ERDAS successfully demonstrated the challenge’s capabilities utilising ERDAS APOLLO and ERDAS TITAN. ERDAS APOLLO is an out-of-the-box, standards-based Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) solution that efficiently manages and quickly serves massive amounts of geospatial data located and distributed across an organization. ERDAS APOLLO simplifies the utilization of vector, raster and terrain data, seamlessly integrating with existing GIS environments, leveraging  business systems and supporting almost any kind of data input (including ArcSDE, PostGIS & Oracle). With a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), ERDAS APOLLO is fully equipped with publishing and consuming capabilities. ERDAS TITAN enables desktop publishing and visualization of data, all while retaining digital ownership rights.

“The SSSI MapViewer Challenge demonstrated just how leading edge and fragile the new LIVE environment can be,” said Kerry Smyth, Manager Mapping & Geospatial Data Branch, Department of Planning, Western Australia. “If our business processes are going to depend on this technology, then we need innovative robust systems and service providers that are reliable. ERDAS proved they are up to the challenge.”

“This forum provided a unique opportunity to showcase our technology. We pride ourselves in products that deliver fast and innovative solutions for authoring, managing and delivering geospatial data to mobile, web and desktop clients,” said Steve du Plessis, Business Development Manager, ERDAS. “We look forward to accepting similar challenges to showcase our web map capabilities, as well as our total end-to-end solution.”

For more information on ERDAS, please call +1 770 776 3400, toll free +1 877 GO ERDAS, or visit www.erdas.com.