Artículo GEOStore: “New web marketing and distribution techniques for geolocated digital content” Autores: V. Sanjaime, A. del Rey, L. Vicens, R. Olivella, A. Hernández, G. Beltrán Publicado en Directions Magacine Fecha: 15 de mayo de 2013 Fuente: http://www.directionsmag.com/articles/geostore-new-web-marketing-and-distribution-techniques-for-geolocated-/328886

1. GEOStore: “New web marketing and distribution
techniques for geolocated digital content”
V. Sanjaime, A. del Rey (1)
, L. Vicens, R. Olivella, A. Hernández (2)
, G. Beltrán (3)
(1)
PRODEVELOP, S.L Pza. D. Juan de Villarrasa, 14, entlo pta. 5 46001 Valencia,
ibrodin@prodevelop.es.
(2)
SIGTE, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Girona, Pl. Ferrater Mora, 1 17071 Girona,
info@sigte.udg.edu
(3)
GEOTURISMO, Calle Archiduque Carlos, 6 pta 17 Valencia, gerson.beltran@gmail.com

2. GEOStore: “New web marketing and distribution
techniques for geolocated digital content”
ABSTRACT
There are several problems in both performance and usability in the representation and
provision of large volumes of geospatial data on the web.
In reference to usability, users often encounter cases such as simultaneous display of a
great deal of data that are stacked on the same geographical area, which makes it
difficult to differentiate them and see the map underneath.
In regard to performance, problems are found with the server, i.e., large amounts of
data involve a great number of queries to databases and large volume of memory used
per request; in reference to bandwidth, great amounts of data travelling over the internet
involves delays in requests and high bandwidth consumption. As for clients, the
problems have to do with the fact that current web browsers have trouble rendering
large amounts of data.
This article shows improvements in these areas via level of detail techniques and
clustering and generation and precaching of tiles with vector data in a similar manner to
what is done with the information in raster format. Likewise, ETL (Extract-Transform-
Load) techniques are shown with those obtained from web data from a different source
for integration into a single repository.

3. Keys word: geolocated digital contents, clustering, vector usability, ETL,
interoperability.
1. INTRODUCTION
The main technological objective of the GEOStore project is industrial investigation
into new types of geolocated digital content such as 3D models and augmented reality
and defining new bundling techniques and web distribution of these digital contents to
facilitate new business models.
To achieve this goal, secondary objectives are also being addressed to maximize
interoperability with existing and future platforms, as are improvements in performance
and usability over current processes that enable working with large volumes of data on
the web and on mobile devices.
It is anticipated, when the project is completed, that the results can be used to enhance
technological development in growth sectors within the scopes of various digital
contents in sectors such as education, geomarketing and urban management, among
others, and especially tourism.
Moreover, these results can be applied in all sectors that enhance development of
geolocated digital content in the information society, in that the processes obtained will
facilitate the creation of platforms and interoperability between them for the
distribution of digital content, their marketing and sharing via social networks. The use
of these techniques will strategically position the sectors applying them in the Web 2.0
market.

4. This article shows the results obtained thus far in terms of integration of existing
geospatial data sources and vector performance and usability on the web.
2. INTEGRATION OF EXISTING GEOSPATIAL DATA SOURCES
Based on identification of those data sources relevant to the project and their
characterisation in terms of type of license and accessibility, the implementation of a
demonstrator built on the ETL tool (“Extraction, Transform and Load”), GeoKettle,
(http://www.spatialytics.org/projects/geokettle) has been undertaken for the importation
and integration of geolocated data into a single spatial database: PostGIS
(http://postgis.refractions.net), which will be the central GEOStore repository.
To implement this demonstrator, three basic and generic sources of widely used and
followed information such as Wikipedia, Flickr and OpenStreetMap were selected. In
all cases, a crowdsourcing type of information was used, in which it is the users
themselves who voluntarily maintain and add new information to the network.
The three sources of information shared a common feature: the information that can be
queried and, ultimately, downloaded is likely to be located at a specific spot on the
earth's surface or, in other words, it is geolocated information. In contrast, there are
three completely different sources of data or information in regard to the format and
nature of the data they contain (text and graphs in the case of Wikipedia, photographs
for Flickr, and geometry and attribute values in the case of OpenStreetMap).
To overcome this difficulty, a GeoKettle workflow was designed. It was based on the
use of APIs (Flickr), SQL scripts and statements to download information from the
network, edit it and store it in the PostGIS database.

5. Fig. 1: General workflow (job) defined in Geokettle
The entire process shown in the figure above is run simultaneously: thus we obtain the
information we wish to store in Wikipedia, Flickr and OpenStreetMap.
Downloading data from OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia was carried out directly from
the network. Once downloaded, they were processed in GeoKettle before being
imported to the central database using the various connectors to databases (MySQL and
PostgreSQL).

6. Fig.2. Workflow for download of georeferenced articles from Wikipedia
Fig.3. Workflow for download of georeferenced articles from OpenStreetMap
In the case of Flickr, its API was used (http://www.flickr.com/services/api/) in REST
format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer) for geolocated
data download. Flickr limits the maximum download of elements per request to prevent

7. massive downloads. For this reason, it was necessary to automate the generation of
requests (in URL formats) to invoke the API without exceeding the download
maximum. The automation process was rendered by defining a recursive script in
python. After downloading the data in XML format, it was parsed and imported to the
central database from GeoKettle.
Fig.4. Work flow for downloading georeferenced data from Flickr
3. VECTOR PERFORMANCE AND USABILITY IN THE WEB
A state of the art for OGC/ISO standards has been rendered for access to vector data,
which reflects the main techniques and standard format and storage protocol systems
and transmission vector GIS information as well as its capabilities in regard to
representative (3D support, augmented reality, etc.) and functional capacity (editing,
transactions, payment details, etc.).

8. Moreover, various research activities have been conducted to achieve an increase in
reading capacity of vector data using and improving OGC standards and the study of
the existence and use of APIs in open source software based on OSM to download and
create points of interest from the Internet for web clients and mobile platforms
(“Wikipedia sites”).
In reference to research techniques for improving performance and usability of web and
mobile customers, a line of research has been opened for creating components based on
multilevel visualization techniques and space partitioning techniques via:
• Geographic tiling
• Grouping based on levels of detail
Tiling allows splitting geographic information based on its location into a hierarchical
tree shaped structure. The hierarchical structure levels refer to the visualization levels
defined in the display. Each level has a spatial segregation that quadruples that of the
highest level. This model is well established in web servers that offer raster cartography
via WMS-C, TMS and other protocols. In this case, attributes and vector element
geometry of the layer of information points are stored in each tile of each level.

9. Fig. 5. Distribution of geographic elements in the tile structure by level of visualization
Furthermore, grouping of information by levels of detail makes it possible to
agglutinate nearby isolated information; thus, the number of elements represented on
the map at a zoom level is reduced, thereby increasing the legibility of the map since it
is not saturated with information.
Fig. 6. Synthesis model of geographic elements by level of visualization
This model combines tiling of information by levels and the clustering of information
makes it possible to provide the tiles with vector information that the web browser will
specify sequentially through small GeoJSON format files that have information from a
defined geographical area.
The components created enable an increase in performance and usability when
displaying and interacting with information thereby solving the problem browsers have
when painting large amount of these elements.

10. Fig. 7. Combined tiling and clustering model of geographic information
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The GEOSTORE project was started in 2011 and has been developed over the past two
years by the Prodevelop S.L. and Geoturismo S.L. companies and the Servicio de SIG y
Teledetección of the Universidad de Girona with funding from the Plan Avanza (Digital
Content) from the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce.
Fig. 8: Project logo and of entities that have funded it
Work is currently being done to show the final project demonstrator: the online
geolocated multimedia products store. The portal was developed using Drupal 7 and the
e-commerce module. The store will be able to store and make available to users a large
quantity of geolocated spatial information. The information is displayed to the user

11. through listings or on a map, with the aid of its geographical location. In addition, the
store will permit any person or entity to add their geographical elements.
Presently, there is an alpha version that can be queried on the internet at the following
web address: http://geostore.prodevelop.es
Fig. 9: Appearance of the alpha version of the online GEOStore.
FIGURES
- Fig. 1: General workflow (job) defined in Geokettle
- Fig.2. Workflow for download of georeferenced articles from Wikipedia
- Fig.3. Workflow for download of georeferenced articles from OpenStreetMap
- Fig.4. Work flow for downloading georeferenced data from Flickr
- Fig.5. Distribution of geographic elements in the tile structure by level of
visualization
- Fig.6. Synthesis model of geographic elements by level of visualization

12. - Fig.7. Combined tiling and clustering model of geographic information
- Fig.8: Logo of the project and of entities that have funded it
- Fig.9: Appearance of the alpha version of the online GEOStore.