1. Benefits of Open Access Approaches to Geospatial Visualization Presentation to Seminar on Geospatial Best Practices for Architects, US Department of Transportation, Washington D.C., April 11, 2007. By: Mark Austin, Natasha Shmunis, Michael Ball, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. E-mail: [austin,kosnat]@isr.umd.edu; mball@rhsmith.umd.edu

2. Table of Contents Open Access: What does it mean? Old approach to data access Advantages of Open Access Using free GIS Open Access/AIXM Architecture Development Challenges

3. Open Access: What does it mean? Geospatial data should be available for free for public use It means this data could be shared with different government agencies, private and public sectors, and other countries. It means there will be more and more data available for users. And more and more tools to support it

4. Old Approach to Data Access Centralized processing of data into meta-data. Often, data and data processing tools are proprietary…

5. Advantages of Open Access Free of cost and free to re-use without any restriction Open data lowers the cost of research and development Promotes independent research Facilitates the use and development of open standards and open source technologies

6. Free GIS resources on the web Almost every state in the US provides web access to geospatial data Many universities collaborate with state governments to provide more data and more tools Map Window GIS is free and open source Affiliates include: Idoho State University, Utah State University,and National Oceanic &Atmospheric Administration… http://www.mapwindow.org/

7. Using Free GIS Data Storage: Florida Wetlands WebGIS at the University of Florida http://srvgis.ifas.uf l.edu/website/wbl 2002/viewer.htm http://srvgis.ifas.uf l.edu/website/wbl 2002/viewer.htm Data Format: Online Interactive Map

8. Using Free GIS Data Storage: Harvard Geospatial Library --catalog and web based mapping environment Data Format: Shapefile format that can be open with free ESRI ARCViewer and other formats http://peters.hul.harvard.ed u:8080/HGL/jsp/HGL.jsp Amtrak stations

9. Using Free GIS Data Storage: Cheasapeak Bay & Mid Atlantic from Space Project at Townson University http://chesapeake.towso n.edu/ http://chesapeake.towso n.edu/ Data Format: Shapefile format that can be open with free ESRI ARCViewer

10. Open Access Visualization Open Access Architecture for AIXM Visualization

11. How can you get involved? We expect to have a web site up-and-running by mid-2007. Software prototypes will be available for download. Contact us: Mark Austin (austin@isr.umd.edu), Natasha Shmunis (kosnat@isr.umd.edu), Michael Ball (mball@rhsmith.umd.edu).austin@isr.umd.edukosnat@isr.umd.edu