Report outlines development of popular Gaia viewer

Gaia 3.2/XIR accessing NSDI Framework WMS and WFS and integrating FGDC Emergency Mapping Symbology

The Final Report for our FGDC CAP 2007 project is now available - we welcome your comments and thoughts.

In this project we implemented lessons learned from the previous versions of Gaia 3 developed as part of CAP 2006. The objective was to enhance the popular free Gaia client with "Incident Response" capabilities. Through this project we developed and tested various technologies - and produced what we believe is not only an improved version of Gaia but the ability for users and developers to grow and enhance the application according to their needs.

We believe the NSDI community will benefit greatly from the new version of Gaia called “Gaia 3.2 with XIR Extenders” – and this is a bold statement since community feedback indicates that the version developed during the 2006 CAP and 2007 CAP projects is now one of the world’s most popular OGC SDI viewers.

Developed as part of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP) Gaia 3.2 is a free Microsoft Windows application for accessing, visualizing and sharing location content, including the latest NSDI Framework Data services.

With Gaia 3.2 we also released a suite of extenders for incident response. These extensions include tracking location with Global Positioning System (GPS), US National Grid (USNG) coordinates reference, Homeland Security Mapping Standard symbology, interoperability with EPA Exchange Network and Secure SDI.

These extensions are based on the new Gaia Extenders API that allows programmers to develop enhancements to Gaia with or without CarbonTools PRO. Any developer can follow a simple set of API rules and drop the extension assembly in the Gaia folder. When Gaia starts it recognizes and implements the extender automatically. A full walkthrough and reference guide for the Gaia Extenders API is also freely available.

Gaia 3.2 is available as a free, installable download at http://www.thecarbonportal.net.

Gaia development was sponsored by the NSDI Cooperative Agreements Program and executed in collaboration with the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NC DENR), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other organizations. The NSDI Cooperative Agreements Program was established by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) to help form partnerships among organizations to implement the NSDI.

- Jeff