A 3D Web Based Geographical Information System for Regional Planning

Managing a territory through web based Geobrowsers requires very interactive and scalable architectures, capable to access vast scale repositories and capable to provide real-time behaviour. This paper illustrates a web-service based infrastructure developed by Graphitech to access geographical information of environmental interest. The paper shows that a 3D Geobrowser, deployed as a web-start application, is used to access a variety of different remote repositories containing a wide range of geographical information at a regional scale. Each user can interactively navigate within the 3D environment and can also interactively send real-time information on environmental features using GeoRSS technology. The paper illustrates how the resulting system is currently in use by an urban planning authority during their daily activities.