EDIT MapViewer and Map REST services Davy, J.¹; Mergen, P.²; Theeten, F.² & Roca-Ristol, P.³
¹National Botanic Garden of Belgium, Bouchout Domain, Nieuwelaan 38, 1860 Meise, Belgium james.davy@africamuseum.be
²Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), Leuvensesteenweg 13, 3080 Tervuren, Belgium
³Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2 28006 Madrid, Spain 93

The MapViewer uses OpenLayers as a base to display map data. Users can upload points in the form of a CSV (coma separated values) file to be displayed on the map. The point information is parsed and stored temporarily in a Postgres database. The layers indicated on the map are served by Geoserver, which allows for layer customization. Users have the ability to fully customize the layers and the points displayed and can overlay the data on a separate WMS (Web Map Service) like Google maps or NASA satellite images. The data can be queried with the help of several PHP scripts and Postgres functions to allow complex results like spatial analysis or distribution statistics. As the results are always displayed within OpenLayers they remain interactive. Included with the MapViewer is the ability to print the maps produced along with all the information overlaying the map, this is done with the help of ImageMagic. All of the software mentioned operates seamlessly in the background on the server so all the user sees at any time is the MapViewer. I plan to show the tools features and capabilities in detail during the booth session.
The MapViewer is available freely and will be maintained beyond the end of the EDIT project by the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the National Botanic Garden of Belgium. Alternatively we offer a mirror to institutions wishing to host their own copies of these services.