Development in NODEJS platform of a Web Mapping application with vector tiles

Abstract

Since 1993 when the Xerox PARC research center (California,
United States) created the first web mapping viewer, the web
development community of Geographic Information Systems
(GIS) has evolved considerably. At present, the web viewer architecture
has been widely extended based on four fundamental
pillars: a spatial database management system such as Postgis; a
map server like Geoserver, Mapserver or Deegree; the Web Map
Service (WMS) protocol; and a library of construction of viewers
based on JavaScript, such as OpenLayers or Leaflet.
The viewers thus implemented allow loading vector data in image
format, through the WMS standard. This architecture is usually
configured to support tiling and image caching, which provides
high performance. However, the new demands of users raise the
need to implement web viewers that directly load vector data,
in order to have the geometry on the client side.
This article presents a case study carried out in the Spatial Data
Infrastructure of the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation,
in which a solution has been sought, still in the development and
testing phase, based on the replacement of the map server and
in the use of vector tiles. The results are positive and represent
a starting point for new web mapping applications that will be
developed in this organization.