Development of Open-Source Applications Using WebGIS Technology

Abstract

In this day and age of technology advancing at a rapid pace, it is very important for people to understand the world they live in and know where in the world they are. With the support of rapidly developing technology, it is much easier for humans to access spatial information than it used to be. Geographic information systems (GIS) can now be used with inexpensive mobile devices. These devices can be GPS, handheld computers, tablets, or even cell phones. With the spread of the Internet, the importance of geospatial information systems became much better understood. Today, such powerful geographic information systems can be used via the Internet (Yandex Maps, Bing Maps, Google Maps, OpenStreet, etc.). In the present day when Web-based GIS applications rapidly spread, and commercial or free source-coded GIS infrastructures can be found easily, a GIS application that has the basic GIS functions that hold the information of historic places and buildings' information by using a GeoServer can be realized. This study including the documentation of this application will supply basic and general information about how a GIS system is and how it works to those concerned about it. The web application that is a part of the study has been developed by Phyton, GeoServer, and PostgreSQL Server and has been designed and realized to be able to keep a historic place's geographic and written information. The application can be seen in two parts; the first part is the part that keeps the written data. Written data is kept through PostgreSQL Server. And the second part is the part that keeps the geographic data. Geographic data is kept through map source files and published through GeoServer. Those maps that are published through Python can be viewed through the web pages. Several basic GIS operations can be done via a web page. Besides the detailed information on GIS, wide information about the technologies necessary for developing the GIS applications via the internet and internet technologies are included within the documentation of the study.