USGS uses Maps a la carte open source
The company's TopoZone.com will be part of the National Map project.
Officials from the U.S. Geological Survey entered into an agreement with Maps a la carte Inc. officials to support the USGS National Map project.
Maps a la carte Inc. created TopoZone.com, an online resource of geospatial information. Among its contributions to the National Map project, Maps a la carte will develop a suite of open source software to serve geospatial data over the Internet.
The USGS is working with several partners to build the National Map as an extensive knowledge base for geographic information.
"Partnership projects like the one with TopoZone provide excellent opportunities for the USGS to leverage technology to help us ensure that our scientific information can be used easily and reliably," said Barbara Ryan, USGS associate director for geography. "We see the development of open source software tools as a step in the right direction for partnering with public and private organizations to provide seamless access to USGS data," she said.
TopoZone contains a library of geospatial data, including USGS digital topographic maps and aerial photographs. The TopoZone Internet mapping system uses Open Source tools, such as the MapServer system, which will be used to serve data to the National Map.
TopoZone will make its complete library of data available to the USGS for testing with other technologies within the National Map project.
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