Flash based WebGIS System and its Application in Monitoring and Evaluating China's Regional Development

WebGIS applications are avidly gaining popularity with extensively development and use of GIS technology. By analyzing the current status of WebGIS, a Flash based WebGIS framework was developed. By converting the traditional GIS files such as ESRI Shapefile to the Shock Wave Flash (SWF) file format, the GIS data was highly compressed and suitable for the Internet publication. The technology was successfully applied to the monitoring and evaluating China’s regional development system. The result shows that flash technology is smart, has easy configuration and fast speed in building WebGIS applications. Flash technology has great potential abilities in expressing spatial information and graphics rendering. To some extent, it’s unique and better than the traditional WebGIS software in graphics dynamic rendering and especially useful for time-series data analysis using an animation method1.