SilverStripe Builds Geospatial Open Data Solution

Wellington-based (New Zealand) web development company SilverStripe has recently launched a new geospatial-based website for the New Zealand Geospatial Office (NZGO). NZGO is a controlling body within Land Information New Zealand (LINZ). The site will be the main online presence for discovering New Zealand geospatial data and enables users to explore large amounts of geographical data from several databases.

This application enables researchers, for example, to access fundamental climate and environmental information. Making this information publicly discoverable in a reusable way will enable researchers to bring datasets together and draw new conclusions.

SilverStripe developed the application to provide access to data and web-service capabilities, supporting Open-Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. The website user can now search for raw data, reports and data sets and stream them into other applications via the OGC web-services. The application can also collect metadata from other distributed catalogue and anyone can add their data via the catalogue. The next step in this project will be to visualise the data in a map application. 

Other SilverStripe projects which follow open data standards include the ‘Ocean Survey 20/20' (OS20/20), created with the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), and the ‘Marine Biosecurity Porthole', a website commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) and NIWA. OS20/20 maps data about species, marine fauna and deep water imagery. The portal visualises marine pests that have been recorded in certain areas around New Zealand ports over the last 10 years, threatening the New Zealand marine environment.

SilverStripe CMS has two geospatial modules for download in their open source section. The mapping module ‘GeoViewer' helps you to visualise your data on a map in an interactive way. The ‘GeoCatalogue' makes data discoverable by supporting open data standards. The module uses well known open source products such as ‘GeoNetwork' to manage the metadata and ‘GeoServer' to manage geospatial data and web services. Both modules are still in alpha, but get already used and work well.

http://geodata.govt.nz