OKMaps - Oklahoma's Geographic Mapping Application

 

AWARD WINNING INNOVATION

During the 2016 MidAmerica GIS Symposium held on April 26 in Overland Park, KS, the OK Office of Geographic Information’s OKMAPS project was awarded the MAGIC Award for GIS Innovation. The GIS Innovation Award is given to nominees who have demonstrated outstanding innovation using GIS technologies to benefit their community in the Mid-America region during the past two years.  Click here for the full Press Release.

 

Project Description

In September 2008, Coordinate Solutions began work with the Oklahoma Department of Homeland Security (OHDHS) and the Oklahoma Office of Geographic Information (OGI) to develop a new statewide GIS clearinghouse that incorporated the following functionality:

  • Point, line, polygon, and raster data storage and download

  • Download capabilities by user specified geographic extent and in multiple data formats and projections

  • Output for Google Earth visualization

  • Support for frequently updated layers

  • Support software and hardware scalability

  • Support secure layers for authorized users only

  • Standards based for data interoperability so that the clearinghouse was not bound to any specific piece of software.

  • Low or no ongoing maintenance costs

With the guidance of ODHS, OGI, and a workgroup of GIS experts Coordinate Solutions developed the new OKMaps clearinghouse using a combination of cutting edge open source GIS technologies including PostGIS, GeoNetwork, GeoServer, and OpenLayers. PostGIS is an extension to the PostgreSQL database that "spatially enables" the server. OKMaps utilizes PostGIS to store and serve all of OGI's vector geographic objects. In order to facilitate searching of the data repository, Coordinate Solutions used GeoNetwork, an open source, standards-based cataloging application for spatially referenced resources. GeoServer, a java-based WMS / WFS server was used to serve geospatial data from the PostGIS database and OGI's raster servers. Finally, Coordinate Solutions, using Microsoft's .NET framework, developed two custom data viewers, one based on OpenLayers and the other on Silverlight, for searching, viewing, and downloading the OKMaps geospatial resources. 

Phase 1 of the project was finalized in September 2009 and the data warehouse is now publicly available here. 

Phase 2 aims to move OKMaps from a proof-of-concept into a production system. The project includes adding an additional tier of production servers for increased availability, updating the site to use current verions of all software packages, optimizing various processes, and adding new functionality to the site.

Project accomplishments (including processing and rendering of statewide LIDAR data) were presented by Roger Bedell to the Oklahoma GIS Council January 10th, 2014. The slide deck is available here.

CONTACT

Mike Sharp, Acting State Geographic Information Coordinator
Oklahoma Office of Geographic Information
(405) 521-4813

PROJECT WEBSITE: Website