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Web Mapping with Global Map Projections

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Web Mapping with Global Map Projections
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351
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CC Attribution 3.0 Unported:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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Production Year2022

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Abstract
Web Mapping as a technology and a method is now twenty years old. Within the OSGeo Community, it has been fostered by projects such as OpenLayers and Leaflet. They evolved tightly intertwined with the framework imposed by free data providers, initially around commercial efforts like Google and later OpenStreetMap. While useful in providing an easy entry to web mapping, and convenient background layers, these data providers also triggered a regression towards centuries-old cartography techniques, in particular the Mercator projection. This has become a major hurdle to web mapping, particularly concerning global data. The Mercator map projection was created to aid sea faring in the XVI century and was rendered useless with the advent of global positioning systems. Its use in cartography may still be acceptable at large scales, neighbourhood or city level, but at smaller scales it imposes severe distortion to distances and areas. For global datasets in particular, the Mercator projection is unusable, for it cannot represent the full surface of the planet. Web mapping developers may work around this framework with libraries such as D3 or proj4js, and by setting up bespoke base layer services. But in doing so they face a different problem: the deep dependence on the CRS index created by the European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG). Primarily concerned with the survey and extraction of fossil fuels, the EPSG leans heavily on local or regional CRSs, largely ignoring global CRSs. Hardly any of the more than 100 map projections and coordinate systems developed since the beginning of the XX century feature in the EPSG index. Landmark projections such as the Eckert series, the Homolosine, Eumorphic, Dymaxion or the Snyder series were never included in the EPSG index. Not even the classical Mollweide projection (one of the turning points towards modern cartography) appears in the EPSG index. With a FOSS4G stapple such as MapServer, this forces the leveraging of map (re-)projections to the client, which is not always possible. Web mapping with global data thus remains a technical challenge with FOSS4G. This address reviews several techniques and work-arounds making global web mapping possible with familiar FOSS4G technologies. Starting with the appropriate configuration of CRS managing software, going through the set-up of data servers and finally providing examples with web mapping clients.
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