A decade of geoinformation sharing at ETH Zurich

A file-based delivery system is not optimal for geodata sharing and the complexity of accessing geospatial data can be challenging for the non-geodata specialists, especially for researchers in other fields than geography, geomatics or cartography. Researchers and students are often interested in a specific region and they do not need nor want to download the complete dataset covering the entire Switzerland. Users spend unnecessarily precious time studying metadata in order to identify and select the correct data tile or layer, having also to deal with GIS tasks such as clipping, merging and reprojecting geospatial data.