OSi MapGenie: Supporting the Academic Community
Within whatever discipline you are studying, whether it is business, science, engineering, environmental, geography or medical etc., spatial is no longer special.
Once the speciality of the Geography department, mapping is now prevalent in use across all schools of thought. Up to 80% of all data has spatial properties. Once we model the real world, we can apply our learning/research and visualise patterns and processes like never before.
For example, a marketing student can visualise on a map where their target customers live, what demographic profile they fit into to, modes of transport available, disposable income etc. Or a medical student can model spatially how a disease outbreak in the population can spread and what prevention methods would be most effective. Location is as important as time is in our daily lives.
Everything we do in life happens ‘somewhere’. If you can harness that ‘somewhere’ in your academic studies, it will allow you to understand more clearly the spatial relationships that happen everyday out there in real world situations. The paradigm shifts currently taking place in the world of mapping technology enables you, the student, to make better and faster decisions more effectively and efficiently than ever thought possible before. You can now identify opportunities and threats displayed on a map that were once hidden in tables of data. You will collaborate with your fellow students more easily by visualising your studies on maps instead of PowerPoint slides.
At Ordnance Survey Ireland we are constantly working with our customers to assist them in the best practice use of location information and technology within their business. OSi strives to support the academic community in the same way, thereby enabling our economy to develop and thrive.
OSi’s MapGenie web service offers many benefits to students using mapping in their studies.
- Rapid, easy access to national vector mapping, orthophotography, and historic imagery, at all scales, through a single source.
- Instant updates – as our supply database is updated, so will your view of our map data through MapGenie.
- Reduces or removes the need for users to store and manage OSi data locally, providing significant time & cost benefits.
- Standards-based and provided in open format, thereby removing the need to manage data translation.
Students can use any OGC compliant desktop GIS application to access the MapGenie WMS service with basic windows authentication. Also, MapGenie also has ESRI REST cached services with token security (ArcGIS Server 10.2.1). All these services are available in ITM, with selected services available in Web Mercator and IG projections. Students have 24/7 access to the service (depending on campus opening hours).
See the following websites to see MapGenie in action.
