ATLIS helps building the KerngisNat viewer for Rijkswaterstaat

The directorate-general for public works and water management (Rijkswaterstaat) is responsible for managing and maintaining many different water-related objects such as bridges, dams, aqueducts, and floodgates. To collect information about these objects in a uniform way a system called the Beheerkaart-Nat (BKN) was created, in which the features of these objects are stored and described. Information in the BKN is enriched with administrative information, such as codes for coupling geographic data to administrative data, and information about the maintenance of the objects. ATLIS is involved in a project to open up information in the BKN, currently named Kerngis Nat, to a wide range of Rijkswaterstaat employees. This project concerns the Kerngis Nat viewer, a broadly accessible web application that exists alongside a desktop application that is only accessible to a restricted number of administrators. The Kerngis Nat viewer is a component in a broader framework in which OGC standards and open source software are utilized to present and query geographic information.

The viewer was build as an extension to a generic viewer application. Communication with the Kerngis Nat database, happens through OGC webservices (WMS, WFS, WFS-T), that are served by the open source products MapServer and GeoServer. For a powerful user interface, that can run in any modern browsers, AJAX technology is used. OpenLayers, the open source equivalent of Google Maps, is used for the map component and Ext Js, a recent and increasingly popular javascript development framework, is used for implementing the general user interface.

Among other things, ATLIS helps building search functionality that is specific to Kerngis Nat, functionality for querying and printing information about water-related objects, and functionality to sketch on the map and persist this to the Kerngis Nat database.

See also:
M.B. Hansler, & A. van Stam. Gebruik van OGC-standaarden bij Rijkswaterstaat. GEO-INFO 2007-5.
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P. van Asperen, M. de Vries, & A. Kabamba. Data Modelling for Water Management. GIM International, may 2006, volume 20, issue 5.
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