Publishing Professional Geodata Via Google

Use TNTmips Pro to Assemble Your Geodata
 TNTmips Pro can be used to prepare the geodata layers you wish to publish as Google Maps and Google Earth tilesets. TNTmips Pro is a fully-featured geospatial analysis system. It can be used to analyze and prepare these Google tilesets from many different kinds of source materials including images, vectors, CAD, shapes, spatial databases, and TINs.

The Structural Earth image illustrated below was prepared by processing the various input layers summarized on the reverse into a global raster. This Structural Earth raster was then converted to the Google tilesets you can access using the links provided below.

Online Tilesets: Google Maps tilesets prepared in TNTmips

Your maps and images can be quickly displayed in a browser from your web pages using Google Maps. For this use your rasters must be processed into the strictly-defined Google Maps tileset structure and referenced by suitable HTML files that overlay these tilesets and the desired gadgets on the base layers from Google Maps.

A Google Maps tileset uses JPEG and/or PNG tiles with a fixed size of 256 by 256 pixels (128 by 128 pixels for cell phones). These tiles are constructed to occupy predefined locations on the Earth's surface in the Spherical / Web Mercator coordinate reference system. The TNTmips Auto Mosaic process can build these Google Maps tilesets from very large collections of input rasters. It also creates HTML files that you can embed in or use as web pages to show various combinations of your geodata overlays and the Google Maps base layers (map, satellite, and terrain).



Online Tilesets: Google Earth tilesets prepared in TNTmips

Your maps and images can be overlaid in your local Google Earth application or in the Google Earth browser plugin as temporary layers if they are referenced by a KML file. This KML file can be distributed for local use or accessed directly from your site's web pages. The actual map and image content of the layer can also be distributed or can be accessed remotely from your web site. For fastest operation in Google Earth, large high-resolution layers should be in Google Earth's tileset structure. Tiles can be PNG, JPEG, or TIFF files and can vary in size, typically within the range of 256 by 256 pixels to 2048 by 2048 pixels. The optimal tile size depends on display board limits and whether the tileset is for local or web use. Tiles do not have to conform to a predetermined grid on the Earth but must use Latitude / Longitude coordinates (WGS84 / Geographic coordinate reference system). The TNTmips Auto Mosaic process can build these tilesets from a very large collection of input rasters and create the required KML file.

Structural Earth

View in browser   Download KML

Kankaanpää, Finland

View in browser   Download KML

Tuusula-Kerava, Finland

View in browser   Download KML

Online Tilesets: Google Maps tilesets shown in Open Layers

A Google Maps tileset that you have created in the TNTmips Auto Mosaic process can also be displayed in a browser from your web pages using OpenLayers, a free open-source JavaScript library for displaying map data in a browser. With OpenLayers you can create web pages that present your local tileset as one layer among several or many geodata layers. These other layers could include your other local tileset layers, WMS layers provided by your TNTserver or by any Web Map Service, WFS vector layers, and tiled layers from Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, NASA WorldWind, or VirtualEarth, among others. The OpenLayers library (www.openlayers.org) provides functions that let you set the geographic extents to be viewed, scale ranges for different layers, and the option to include layer controls so users can manually turn layers on or off. OpenLayers also includes graphical map navigation controls (zooming, panning) as well as keyboard and mouse navigation control.