What are some approaches to accessing geographical data on a local network?

Question

I'm currently writing a geographical web application. Obviously it needs access to some geographical data, like terrain elevation and the location of roads. The twist is that the application must be able to work disconnected from the internet - i.e. getting its GIS data from a server on the local network.

I'm assuming that I can't use the Google Maps API.

Is there an easy way to do this?

Answer 1

There are plenty of outfits that will sell you map data, and possibly some public domain sources. The map data can be quite expensive (an all-singing, all-dancing set of digital survey map data for the UK is about £5 million), but it certainly is available.

GIS engines can be purchased from proprietary vendors such as ESRI, or you may be able to use an open source one such as GRASS or QGIS. The map data is available in standard formats which most if not all GIS engines can use or at least import.

Without knowing the ins and outs of your application I can't really comment about which one might be more appropriate, but if you want geographic data available locally you will probably need a GIS server of some description available to your application.