The Commonwealth Government has launched the National Map Open Data initiative {cslimited}http://nationalmap.nicta.com.au{/cslimited} describing it as part of the Government’s commitment to increasing the number of publicly available datasets.
It gives users access, via a web browser, to a single platform for Government geospatial datasets, including those from the Bureau of Meteorology, Australian Bureau of Statistics and http://data.gov.au, a web site that offers an easy way to find, access and use public datasets from the Australian Government. National Map Open Data was developed by the Department of Communications in collaboration with NICTA and Geoscience Australia.
The geospatial data is visually presented in a map format, enabling users to see the data that they extract. Currently available datasets cover information on land, water, infrastructure, broadband access, boundaries and population and the Government says more will follow.
According to communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, “The National Map embraces Open Data principles, providing an open framework of geospatial data services that supports commercial and community innovation, for the benefit of all Australians and the Australian economy.”
He said it was “an example of this Government delivering on its election commitments for open data and an open economy,” and that the Government’s commitment had already resulted in the number of datasets available on data.gov.au increasing more than seven-fold to 3,500 since the new Government came to power.
The geospatial data is presented in-browser as a map. It is based on Cesium and uses Bing imagery as the base map. This enables users to see the available data before they extract it. Cesium is a JavaScript library for creating 3D globes and 2D maps in a web browser without a plug-in. It uses WebGL for hardware-accelerated graphics. It is cross-platform, cross-browser and tuned for dynamic-data visualisation. It is open source under the Apache 2.0 license and is free for commercial and non-commercial use.
WebGL (Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript application programming interface for rendering interactive 3D graphics and 2D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. It is supported on most current desktop and phone/tablet browsers. However in Safari under Mac OS it is disabled by default (going to preferences, advanced and ticking the ‘show develop menu in menu bar’ option will produce a ‘develop’ item in the main menu and WebGL can be activated within that menu).
The National Map is available at http://nationalmap.nicta.com.au.
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