Haiti SDI Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) WFS-T

(updated Jan 26, 2010) CubeWerx and The Carbon Project have established an online service to collect and distribute WMS image annotations and features over Haiti. The Haiti VGI (Volunteered Geographic Information) service, data model and tools are based on international standards, and can be updated by anyone. The companies are working with Crisis Commons, Crisis Mappers Google groups and others to coordinate the services. Anyone may contribute updates with free Gaia WFS-T tools or any WFS-T client. Some updates include:

Tent Cities (GSF - remove some WMS imagery layers for faster navigation if needed)

Champs de Mars area Shelters (GSF)

Staging Areas at Port au Prince airport (GSF)

The service is designed as rapid collection point for Haiti WMS imagery annotations, emergency operations, framework data updates etc. In addition to framework data, the service includes three layers that follow a very simple WMS image annotation model of - Point, Line and Area Annotations - and let you quickly add annotations to WMS imagery with DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Google imagery.

To get started and contribute data such as tent city locations using these layers, install Gaia with WSF-T Extender, (or use your own WFS-T client) and add the following service -

http://portal.cubewerx.com/cubewerx/cubeserv/cubeserv.cgi?CONFIG=haiti_vgi&DATASTORE=vgi&service=WFS&request=GetCapabilities

Read the Capabilities description, then select and add Haiti Point Annotations to your layer list. Then select the "Config" button at the bottom of Gaia and read the schema - you are now ready to add WMS image annotations from DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Google WMS. Note, users may wish to review the Gaia WFS-T User Guide for more details and add other Haiti SDI services as well - especially the Cascading WMS. The Cascading WMS will show you the locations of OpenStreetMap roads, buildings, points of interest and locations being added by the OSM community.

The VGI WFS-T service and data use international standards for Web Feature Services (WFS-T) and Geography Markup Language (GML) from OGC. Pretty much anything can be added to the service as needed. A WMS of the data is also being made available to distribute the updates.

Online services from DigitalGlobe, OpenStreetMap, GeoEye, Microsoft Bing Maps, Yahoo! Maps, any Web Map Service (WMS) or WFS can be used with the VGI WFS.

For information contact info@thecarbonproject.com.