NATIONAL DYNAMIC ATLAS: A NEW WEB BASED MAPPING SYSTEM

R. Liu, X. Zhou, J. Jiang, Y. Jia, P. Lu

National Geomatics Center of China, Beijing, China

liurm@nsdi.gov.cn

The National Dynamic Atlas (NDA) is a web based online mapping system using the own fundamental data and thematic data extracted dynamically from various websites in China. National Geomatics Center of China (NGCC) launched this website tentatively in July 2006. It includes four sub-systems: data discovery, extracting and processing sub-system, thematic mapping sub-system, user management sub-system and web interface sub-system. The interface of this system is consisted of five main function modules: the index of maps, thematic mapping, map quick creation, map collection and bulletin board. The NDA provides base maps of different scales from 1:1,000,000 to 1:32,000,000, history and ancient maps, ortho-photo maps, statistical data extracted from websites on the fields of natural environment, natural resources, natural disasters, vital statistics, society and economy, citizen life, etc., and tools for map making.

There are over 30,000 indicators of thematic statistical data, which are collected from more than 20 Chinese government agency’s websites, can be used, and there are 400 thematic map sheets can be browsed from NDA till now. The online map making tools include indicator calculating tool, color palette tool, text annotating tool and tool for thematic symbolization, such as histogram, pie-chart, line-chart, animation, and so on.

The key technical points for developing the NDA are Web mining, data extracting and managing, geo-coding, base maps managing, metadata implementing, online thematic map making and displaying, thematic map database organizing, etc.. Using online, offline, or user’s own data, user can make their own thematic maps and browse all of existing maps disseminated by the system as well.

It is a new Web Based Mapping System and data sharing platform of data of the National Fundamental Geographic Information System (NFGIS) in China for Internet users. Any user can browse and make thematic maps through the NDA website without any demand of GIS software, base map dataset and even thematic statistical data.

The address of the NDA website is: http://www.webmap.cn/.